Income & Wealth
Your annual income on the global distribution, in USD, EUR, GBP or NOK. The world median is about $4,380 a year (2017 PPP); $33,500 puts you in the top 10%.
Enter gross income before tax. The ladder is in 2017 PPP dollars, so a rough conversion at fixed rates (EUR 1.08, GBP 1.26, NOK 0.093 per dollar) is applied.
You earn more than
93%
of the world's population. The global median is $4K a year.
Your position
Global income ladder
Why PPP: $50,000 buys far less in Oslo than in Delhi. The World Bank ladder is in purchasing power parity dollars, which price the same basket of goods everywhere, so the comparison is about what you can buy, not the exchange rate.
In context
The global median income has roughly doubled since 2000 in real terms, and the share of people under the extreme poverty line fell from about 29% to under 9% in the same period, World Bank figures. Most of the people above you on this ladder live in a handful of rich countries; most of the people below you live in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Compared to your own country the picture is usually much flatter.
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Reference tables: average income in United States and average income by country.
Look up a value: Is $60,000 a good salary? and other percentile lookups.
Related tests
About this test
Enter what you earn per year or per hour in USD, EUR, GBP or NOK. The module converts to US dollars and places the figure on the global income distribution from the World Bank's Poverty and Inequality Platform, expressed in 2017 purchasing-power-parity dollars.
The distribution is log-normal and very wide. The global median is about $4,380 a year. $16,800 puts you in the top 20% of the world, $33,500 in the top 10%, $55,000 in the top 5% and $140,000 in the top 1%. A typical salary in a rich country is a global outlier.
What is the median income in the world?
About $4,380 a year per person in 2017 PPP dollars, from the World Bank PIP breakpoints the module uses. Half the world lives on less than $12 a day. The bottom 10% live on under $870 a year.
What income is the top 1% globally?
About $140,000 a year in PPP terms. The top 5% starts near $55,000 and the top 10% near $33,500. The module treats your input as PPP-adjusted, so the comparison is approximate.
Why does the module use PPP?
$50,000 buys more in India than in Norway. PPP adjusts for what money buys locally, so two people with the same PPP income have similar living standards wherever they are. The breakpoints are from pip.worldbank.org.
Percentiles above come from the same parameters the Income & Wealth module uses. See the methodology for how they are calculated.