Global Income Percentile Calculator
See how your household income ranks against the rest of the world.
Source: World Bank Poverty and Inequality Platform (PIP) · Per-country most recent PIP survey (2017-2025) · last verified 2026-09-12
How this is calculated
Your household income is divided by household size to get a per-capita figure, then compared against each country's income distribution — modelled as log-normal from its median PPP income and Gini coefficient — weighted by population to estimate your global percentile.
This global comparison sits alongside a related percentile view on this site: the National Income Percentile calculator shows the same income compared only against your own country rather than the whole world. For converting an income figure between countries at equivalent purchasing power specifically, see the PPP Salary Converter.
Frequently asked questions
- How is "global percentile" calculated?
- Each country's income distribution is modelled as log-normal from its median PPP income and Gini coefficient. Your per-capita income is run through every country's distribution and weighted by population, giving an estimate of where you'd rank if the whole covered population were ranked together.
- Why PPP-adjusted?
- Purchasing Power Parity adjusts for the fact that a dollar goes further in some countries than others, so incomes are comparable across borders. Enter your income already converted to PPP terms for the most accurate comparison.
- How much of the world does this cover?
- This calculator covers a set of major economies representing roughly three-quarters of world population — not an exhaustive 200+ country lookup — so treat the result as an informed estimate rather than an official statistic.
- What does global income percentile mean?
- Your global income percentile shows what share of the world's population earns less than you, in PPP-adjusted terms — a percentile of 90 means you earn more than roughly 90% of people globally.
- What income puts you in the global top 1%?
- It varies by source and methodology, but PPP-adjusted individual income in the range of roughly $50,000–$60,000 per year has commonly been cited as putting someone in the global top 1% — a figure many people in high-income countries would consider solidly middle-class locally, illustrating how large the gap is between national and global income distributions.
- How is income adjusted for purchasing power?
- Income is compared in PPP (purchasing power parity) terms rather than raw currency amounts, so a given income is judged by what it can actually buy rather than what it converts to at market exchange rates — this makes comparisons across countries with very different costs of living meaningful.
- What is the difference between income and wealth percentile?
- Income percentile measures how much you earn in a given period (a flow). Wealth percentile measures your total net worth — assets minus debts (a stock). The two distributions differ substantially: wealth is typically far more concentrated at the top than income.
- What data source is used?
- Each country's income distribution is modelled as log-normal from its median PPP income and Gini coefficient (a measure of income inequality), rather than a raw household survey microdata download — see the calculation explanation above for how your percentile is derived from that model.