On the heels of new Commerce Department data, U.S. President Obama warned that it would take “many more months” for the country to get out of recession. Expats living abroad in countries with low costs of living weren’t surprised.
“I’m glad I moved abroad when I did,” said Lee Harrison, an expat living in Uruguay. “A lot of us living abroad saw this coming a long way off, and the fact that this economic meltdown is worse than the government originally said doesn’t come as much of a surprise.”
The revised Commerce Department figures show that in the first 12 months of the recession, the economy shrank more than twice as much as first estimated.
According to Steven Landefeld, director of the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, the revision was “in line” with past experience in which initial figures underestimate the depth of recessions during their early stages, he said.
“I’d say that underestimating the negative and overestimating the positive is pretty much “in line” for most government reporting,” said Harrison.
Harrison is one of a growing number of expats who have moved abroad to find lower utility and real estate prices, lower taxes, and better health care than they could enjoy in the U.S. or Canada. Many are living on half, a third, or even less than they’d spend for a comparable lifestyle back home, making living abroad especially attractive for retirees and people living on fixed incomes.
