"Cost of living" is not that straightforward to compute. In many Asian cities, the greatest cost is rent/mortgage. The cities are typically expensive and overcrowded because suburbs have no good schools and other amenities. However, most of these open salary calculators take raw purchasing power (like cost of commodity) to arrive at a rate.
Not just Asian! I live in Melbourne, Victoria. Until we had three children and sent them to a private school, rent and later mortgage was our largest cost by a long margin.
