Even adjusting for PPP is complex though, because different goods have different cost adjustments. Actually buying a condo in Taiwan isn't cheap - I think my in-laws said it was around USD$500K for a 3BR/2BA in one of the Taipei exurbs, and can go up past $1M for luxury condos near a city center. That's close to Bay Area prices on McDonalds wages. A lot of Taiwanese youth are pretty much priced out of many markers of adulthood (not unlike many American Millennials), and can't do much other than eat, work, and play videogames. To have a house of their own and a job with the potential for career advancement, they basically need to wait for their parents to die. That's not really captured in PPP numbers, the same way that rampant asset inflation hasn't been captured in the American CPI.