Cost of living is high every where. However, if you earn in USD and live in Asia and Africa, USD will translate into a lot of money in local currency
The same here in my city for a couple with no children that skips a full medical insurance (a full medical insurance in my State costs yet about 500 dollars per person in a single month).
Living in your country might be too expensive, and people must work double or do side hustles and businesses. People in my place are busy doing small businesses like eateries.
I do believe that there are families who can stretch their budget well. The $500 is also not easy to raise at this time when salaries are too slow to increase and prices soar up like crazy.
Even this months, if an unplanned expenses comes up, this money might not be much. As we know anything can come up at anytime.
I agree with you, it is impossible to manage $100 monthly unless you are living alone and have no aircon and washing machine that eats up the current bill.
Yes, in fact, it's very common, for ex., for a teacher working in public school, to be forced to teach among 3 or 4 schools to make ends meet. Even so, it gets impossible to pay a full medical insurance, that practically requires the salary of a federal judge.
That would be crucial if the cost of living exceeds the overall income of some people. They might find it hard to survive such ordeals. They can do farming in their backyard to augment their expenses.
Not that easy, due to the impossibility to farm when you don't live in the countryside. And yes, the cost of living easily exceeds the income of a great number of families. A lot of families live on governmental allowances, that covers the expenses of a couple during a week. For the rest of the month, they often live on charity or on illegal jobs (not registered jobs) or both of them. That's Latin America.
Oh my God it's crucial if they have two or three children. Can they not find a job even in the labor sector? That's a hard life to survive from help from charitable institutions.
...it could be even more than two or three children (even if four and more children per family were more common until about 15 years ago). They often are not qualified (or too old) to get a job even in the labour sector (good for the youngsters, but what about a middle aged or worse, a third aged?)...or worse: too lazy to work, preferring by far the government allowance for free, also considering that every child under legal age carries the right for his/her unemployed parents to get an additional amount from the government (despite it's crumbs, not enough to sustain a child over a few days).
