Capitalizing on Income Disparity

1) How conducive a country is for living depends on 1) level of development; 2) income disparity. The former the higher the better and the latter the narrower the better.
Never mind Canada is a more developed than Singapore, let's just compare income disparity of the same year.

Canada:
"In 2005, the average market income for families in the highest quintile was 12.8 times higher than those in the lowest quintile. However, once all government transfers are distributed, this ratio fell to 6.9 times higher. After taxes the average income for families in the highest quintile was 5.6 times higher than their counterparts in the lowest" -- Statistics Canada

Note: quintile means 20 percentile

Singapore (2005 income):
Top quintile (20%) avg. monthly income : S$12,890 (top 10%: S$16,480; 2nd 10%: S$9300); -- Department of Statistics, Singapore
Bottom quintile avg. monthly income : S$590 (lowest 10%: S$0; 2nd lowest 10%: S$1180); -- Department of Statistics, Singapore

Hence, income disparity for families in the highest quintile was 21.8 times higher than those in the lowest quintile.

Income disparity in Singapore is a lot higher even with the income re-distribution program named "Progress Package".

So Canada is a better place for making a living then Singapore.

2) When considering retirement, one needs to assess his disposable fund against equivalent in the national income scale to determine affordability and quality of life.

For illustration purpose, if S$4K monthly income is around 30th percntile income in Singapore, and a retiree with S$1K/mth disposable could live as well as a working person with S$4K/mth income but needs to pay for housing loan, tax, CPF, insurance, and transportation to work, then this retiree is said to have a quality of life equivalent to the 30th percentile income earner of that country.

Most of the time, a person who has income at a certain level will retire at a much lower level because the savings are usually not comparable to the expense needed to maintain the same level of quality of life while working. For example, a S$4K/mth earner might only be able to save enough to afford S$0.4K/mth for retirement -- equivalent to may be 70th percentile income earner.

A strategy to maintain the level of quality of life is to emmigrate to a place where cost of living is lower; which means income level is also proportionally lower.

So the same S$1K/month retirement will allow a person to live in the top 10% and S$0.4K/month the 30th percentile in Thailand, especially in places like Chiang Mai and lower cost cities.

So country like Thailand is a better place for retirement than Singapore.

Overall, one could live well and/or retire well by capitalizing on Income Disparity.