How does your income stack up to the rest of the world? You may be surprised: if you make at least $47,500 a year, you're in the global top 1%. London-based creative media firm Poke has built a handy website called, simply, GlobalRichList, which reveals where you stand financially compared to the rest of the world. Enter in your annual income, tell it which denomination to use (US Dollars, Canadian Dollars, Japanese Yen, Euros, Pound Sterling), click the magic button... and find that you're (for example) the 46,777,566th richest person in the world, approximately.
Or not. This is hardly a scientific exercise; the rankings are based on averages and data from over five years ago. It doesn't take into account cost of living, "purchasing-power parity," or any of the other complexifying factors that make economics so much fun. But it is provocative, because even if the precise ranking is wrong, it's unlikely to be wrong by even an order of magnitude: I may not be exactly the 46,777,566th richest person on the planet, but my "real" ranking is probably within a few tens of millions of that on either side. And even that degree of approximation puts me financially better-off than close to six billion people -- something which I knew to be true, but remains kind of staggering when spelled out in this way. I suspect that many readers of WorldChanging would fall into this same rough ranking.
How rich are you? If you're reading this site, you're very likely in the top 10% of the planet. What are you going to do with your wealth?
(IDFuel also wrote about this site, and their post is worth checking out.)
(Thanks, Jet!)
Comments (2)
add a few extra numbers onto your salery to see how rich the "richer" .7% lives and you get a great little message:
You are in the top 0,001% richest people in the world.
You don¹t need to know any more than that (and besides our calculator can't do sums that big).
Please consider donating just a small amount of your enormous wealth to help some of the poorest people in the world. Many of their lives could be improved dramatically or even saved if you donate just one hour's salary (approx $3383.88)
Posted by thom | November 22, 2004 6:05 PM
Posted on November 22, 2004 18:05
The author of the entry states:
"my "real" ranking is probably within a few tens of millions of that on either side"
I doubt it. I would expect adjusting for PPP globally would dramatically alter one's ranking. And adjusting income for traded goods/services that are not included in income but make up a larger proportion of earnings in poorer countries than developed countries would further lower the ranking of most of the people reading this blog.
-Kevin
Posted by Kevin Postlewaite | November 24, 2004 9:34 AM
Posted on November 24, 2004 09:34