Luxury v. child-raising-friendly: Expats choose one
While it’s true that many potential expats have a choice of going to one particular country or staying in their home country, many others can choose a country out of many choices. Recent results of a large international expat survey that generally you’ll have to choose either a more luxurious lifestyle in a “developing” country or a more basic lifestyle in a country with a good education system.
It makes perfect sense if you think about it, but it’s still a bit of a shame that those who move to countries with lower costs of living will get unacceptable public education bundled in.
More luxury in developing countries
The 2011 HSBC Expat Explorer survey breaks its results down into many different areas, and one eye-catching finding is that those who move to countries such as Thailand, South Africa, or the Philippines, report living a more luxurious lifestyle than they would back home.
The luxuries included are domestic staff, swimming pools, owning their property or owning more than one property, but the findings also show that these people are slightly less likely to go on a luxurious holiday. To me that’s a strange mix of countries, but having lived in Thailand for a while I can confirm that something like domestic staff costs so little that even an English teacher with a decent posting can afford some if they like.
Education opportunities are elsewhere
Another thing that I learned about Thailand, and Bangkok in particular, is that the public school system is terrible by Western standards, and that almost no expats with any means at all would be satisfied having their own children educated in one of them. As a result, an expat living in Bangkok absolutely must send their child or children to a private school, and those can range from expensive to outrageously expensive. If a British executive working in a bank in Bangkok has to pay US$800 per month to send her child to a decent school then even the better economics of the lifestyle can turn upside down easily.
The survey shows that Australia ranks number one for childrens health and well-being, and it’s also known for good public schools as well. Of course Australia is extremely expensive on a global scale, so only expats being transferred by multi-national companies are likely to make enough to thrive there.
Spain ranks number two, and the USA ranks number four, according to the article. Both of those countries have some more affordable areas, but the schools in those areas might not be of high enough quality to satisfy foreign parents, so an expensive private school might again be necessary.
A friend of mine is living in Bali with his wife and two young children, and he’s admitted that it’s likely that they’ll have to move back to Australia when it comes time for the kids to go into high school because the Bali options are either too expensive or questionable. It seems that family expats have many tough trade-offs to consider.