Half the world’s people live on less than about $9 a day each, in prices where a dollar buys what it does in the US: about $3,300 a year per person. $30 a day per person is above four in five.
Divide a household’s after-tax income by everyone in it, children included, convert it at that country’s own price level, and the World Bank’s 2023 surveys give a median of about $9.09 a day across the 8 billion. Each country is close to lognormal, set by its median and its mean, so the world is a mixture of 214 of them: 13% under $3 a day, 53% under $10, 81% under $30 and 92% under $60. A UK couple on £38,000 is about $59 a day each, the 92nd percentile of the world and the 54th of the UK.
It is income per person, not a salary, and the surveys mix income and consumption, which is lower for the poorest. A lognormal fit overstates the very poorest (12.9% of the world under $3 a day against 10.5% on the World Bank’s own country figures) and understates the very richest, and it says nothing about wealth, which is far more unequal. A percentile ranks you; it does not say what is enough.
Estimate with the rule, then check it against the calculator that models it properly.
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