Something wrong with this survey. I’ve lived in Singapore and Taiwan. No comparison in quality of life and opportunities which are dramatically higher in Singapore.
The Internations (that did the research) is minimally active in Taiwan and I think most of the member are from Taiwan anyway.
It’s common for people on expat packages to have their housing covered, maybe not as an allowance, but paid directly for them. A few thousand USD is common and can easily be 4000 or 5000 in Hsinyi district.
How could the Internations be minimally active in Taiwan with its members being mostly from Taiwan?
According to their web page, it says that they have 2.3 million members worldwide, with 7728 members from 150 countries registered in Taipei, in contrast with 47,058 members registered in Singapore, that definitely doesn’t qualify as “most of the members are from Taiwan anyway”, does it?
It also says that there are 10 events taken place each month, which sounds quite a lot to me, and there are 11 Internations groups organised by 17 consuls. Obviously not as many as real expat hotspots a la Singapore or Hong Kong, but the activity doesn’t seem to be flatlining either and seems pretty reasonable for its size. I would definitely not call that ‘minimally active’, would you?
So–are they like saying that this might not be such a bad place and stuff?
[quote=“Icon, post:18, topic:155018, full:true”]BTW, bobyguards also get pretty niffty packages.
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I love living in Taiwan and I have no desire to belittle this 1st place ranking.
BUT (there is always a ‘but.’)
The source of that data is “InterNations” members which is really not a particularly representative sample of expats.
Consider the source!
Uh, I’m an InterNations member and I participated in that survey. I wouldn’t say I’m the Average Joe of expats, but I’m fairly representative. I live here, and I’ve been to many of the places in question. I also commute between Taipei and Manila, so I’m not limited to a single vision of Taiwan as paradise.
There is no conflict between you being representative and my question about the InterNations survey being representative of expats.
Some InterNations members are, no doubt, representative. Having once been an InterNations member, I continue to hold that the group itself is NOT particularly representative.
AND, I explicitly acknowledged that I agree with the result; based on my having lived in four countries outside the US. But I’m not broadly representative either.
Alright then, enlighten us. What’s the measure of representation? Who should they have asked? How or why is the average InterNations member not considered representative?
While considering the source is crucial in understanding survey results, it seems to me, crossing between the various InterNations groups, membership is entirely representative of expats at-large. While there are a certain number of newbies with the types of questions that frequently turn up here, the overwhelming majority of people I’ve interacted with are highly involved in their respective communities and industries. The questions asked on the survey were explicitly geared toward subjects and issues that are important to long-term expats.
Moreover, what I’ve heard on various sites, and forgive me if I’ve detected it in your tone, is that people are upset because, “Well, they didn’t ask me!”
I would be really interested to see no just a survey, but also a study (that didn’t rely upon the opinions of the people being surveyed) of how long term expats fare in Taiwan. In particular, I think a few issues that these surveys with a short term, subjective focus tend to miss are the following:
I should imagine that on those measures, a lot of expats and their children are going to be utterly screwed in Taiwan.
Forgive me if I decline to write an article on sampling theory or polling methodology.
As for ‘didn’t ask me’ I have participated for several years now in a similar poll conducted by HSBC though I don’t have their results at hand.
After two years of membership in InterNations, I decided not to renew because I developed a very low opinion of InterNations as an organization. It’s that experience that led me to conclude their survey is unlikely to be particularly valid and is more likely to have been motivated by their desire for publicity rather than to be truly informative. I don’t care that they didn’t ask me. I didn’t want them to ask me this or anything else.
There are a lot of studies that one might be interested in and a lot of factors one could evaluate. But there is no Nirvana anywhere.
Too much of what you ask involves the laws in the ‘home-country’ of the parents in ways that do not measure anything about the country of residence.
While the studies you suggest might be of real interest, they may be too specific to pairs of countries to rank the countries of residence.
I think these kinds of surveys are limited to factors in the country of residence that affect all expats equally.
Another consideration is what ‘being utterly screwed’ actually means. In Taiwan, rentals are cheap while home buying is very expensive. But home ownership is a fraud in most countries, with a very low historical rate of return.
I also wonder to what percentage of expats do your extra questions even apply? What you are describing is more like migrants than expats!
Actually, even worse in Japan and many other places here in Asia. I was recently reading about Brazilian/Japanese experience. Nope nope.
Truly the data can be a bit subjective, but some parts considered in the survey results -safety, taxes, etc. -are quite straightforward.
I dont think home ownership is a fraud in taipei…
It’s a fraud because it’s sold as a super investment for accumulating wealth and it isn’t anything close to that.
Super investment? I just think of it as a regular investment.
I didn’t necessarily mean to compare the long term fate of expats in Taiwan with the fate of expats in other countries, more just as a way of looking at what’s going on here.
Home ownership is a fraud in many countries, but I don’t believe that it has to be that way necessarily. Even beyond the financial side, I believe that there are some much deeper issues that revolve around home ownership to do with civic participation and inclusion, family formation, and so on, at least in the modern age. Having a society of renters is probably not very good for long term political stability in many countries (especially those that have historically had higher rates of home ownership). Property right in the abstract mean nothing if people don’t actually have property.
As for “being utterly screwed”, I mean that I wonder how much money many foreigners here have for retirement. I don’t think that the Taiwanese government is going to look after them, so who will?
I can’t really comment on those particulars, but I imagine that there are probably people who have made decent money in Japan and have nothing to show for it.
What is an expat?
Hmm. I read that as Boobyguards.
Where do i sign up?
Patrick after he changed his name to Alison.