INCOME DISTRIBUTION

What’s your percentile in global income distributions?

Although we have seen a dramatic improvement in living standards in the last two centuries, vast income gaps still exist

It is hard to comprehend how a black swan event like the COVID-19 pandemic can reverse two decades of progress when it comes to lifting people out of extreme poverty. Whereas previous projections had called for a reduction of 31 million out of poverty in 2020, the global health emergency has added at least 88 million people to the list of extremely poor. In doing so, it reminded us that Poverty is still a global issue and we need to do a lot more to eradicate this menace.

Even when we compare the improved living standards, there is still a wide discrepancy among countries and within the countries themselves. One such issue that I discussed earlier is the distribution of global wealth — the richest 1.1% of the global population control 45.8% of all the assets. While on the other extreme, 55% of the population owns only 1.3% of global wealth.

To take this discussion forward, let’s look at the visualization above. It charts the income global income distributions in 16 different countries across all the continents. Also included in the infographic are the percentiles for world income distribution. Ruben Berge Mathisen used the 2021 income data from the World Inequality Database (WID) on a per-adult basis.

Following are the numbers on how much annual income is needed (at minimum) to be in the top 1% in the 16 countries featured on the infographic — United States ($336,953.19), Germany ($212,106.53), Canada ($193,035.55), Australia ($164,773.40), United Kingdom ($162,547.56), Russia ($124,805.86), Mexico ($130,388.19), Egypt ($115,546.44), Brazil ($115,257.86), China ($99,095.34), Colombia ($97,500.37), Argentina ($94,794.89), Indonesia ($85,176.35), India ($65,370.51), Nigeria ($53,144.36) & Ethiopia ($24,295.66).

As you can see from the numbers above, the top 1% of income earners in America make at least $336,953 in annual pre-tax income — more than $100,000 above the 1% of the next closest countries, Germany and Canada. On the other side of the scale, adults in Ethiopia only need…