Is it because of good health care and/or high living costs?

This is from the article, Our Pro-poor health care policy rewarded, by Professor Chula Goonasekera in The Island Online.

We are a tropical country with a 20 million population. Its birth rate and death rate are reducing with a reduction in population growth. Currently life expectancy in Sri Lanka is estimated to be 68 for males and 75 for females. As a result, our population pyramid had now begun to invert and Sri Lanka is expected to be the third oldest country in Asia after Japan and Singapore by 2010 in the Asian region. Unfortunately, to date, we are yet to pay sufficient attention to care for our increasingly aged population.

Find Singapore here.

We aren't that rich :(

This is from the article, Singapore fears maid exodus to Hong Kong, Taiwan, on Reuters by Gillian Murdoch.

Indonesian and Sri Lankan maids are paid S$280 ($200) a month in Singapore, and Filipinas up to S$350 ($256).

That is less than half what they can earn in Hong Kong and Taiwan, where employers pay $506 and $550 respectively.

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