When we consider how well we are doing financially, we must choose a referent. That is, when we ask the question (“How well am I doing?”), we are also, simultaneously choosing a comparison group (e.g., people in our profession, people of our same sex, people our age, etc).
Most of us probably also restrict our considerations to people in the same country. We usually don’t think about how well we are doing compared to all human beings in the world, but this website allows us to do just that. If you put in your yearly income, it will show you where you rank on a global scale (Yen, Canadian dollars, U.S. dollars, Euros, and Pounds only, unfortunately).
I put in the median yearly income for a full time worker in the U.S. and this was the calculation:
This, of course, doesn’t consider the cost of living differences, but it still offers an interesting perspective.
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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
Comments 14
Undefined — November 28, 2009
The following does adjust for purchasing power, and finds an income of $39,336 (for a household of one person) to be in the richest 1%: http://www.givingwhatwecan.org/resources/how-rich-you-are.php .
Carla — November 28, 2009
once you get over 300k USD, it stops recalculating your numerical position. That is, it tells you that someone making 300k a year is the same place in line (so to speak) as someone making 5million a year.
Talinka — November 28, 2009
I had this conversation with some farmers from South America. Problem is, even though the website tells me I'm in the richest 11% of the world, I'm not rich considering my living expenses and my possibilities in the country in which I'm living. And thus, while I'm most certainly better off than the majority of the people in the world, and aware of this, I don't really consuder myself rich, because within the context of my country I simply ain't. After all, even a large portion of poor Americans are rich compared to many other people around the world, but we do not suggest they should spend their money on fruit trees.
How rich are you? » Eric Stoller’s Blog — November 29, 2009
[...] Sociological Images & LR Tags: Class, class [...]
Simoleon Sense » Blog Archive » Weekly Wisdom Roundup #55 (Weekend Reading For Smarter Types) — November 29, 2009
[...] In Global Terms, How Rich Are You? - Via Sociological Images - When we consider how well we are doing financially, we must choose a referent. That is, when we ask the question (”How well am I doing?”), we are also, simultaneously choosing a comparison group (e.g., people in our profession, people of our same sex, people our age, etc). [...]
Pauline — November 29, 2009
Another meaningless statistic... Just another site trying to make people feel guilty because they are supposedly rich... until you realise that the $2 which might feed a whole family in one country won't even buy you a bottle of water in your own. Cost of living changes everything quite dramatically.
Duran2 — November 29, 2009
Pointless. Factor in cost of living, then we'll talk. I may make $$$, but I can't make $$$ from a place where housing is cheap.
Eric Stoller — November 29, 2009
For everyone who has labeled this as "pointless" or "meaningless", I have a lot of empathy for you...critical awareness of class privilege is painful as is the nature of how people in the U.S. are socialized to think about their "wealth" vs. looking at the impacts on all peoples. Awareness of one's hypocrisy is never easy to pay attention to.
Bethany — November 30, 2009
This is interesting to me. I've been struggling with money over the past few years, and at times have wondered whether or not I would qualify as "poor," whether legally or socially. I certainly don't feel wealthy, I have a really extensive amount of debt from college and am living pay check to pay check. I make around $13,000 a year, and my fiance isn't working (he's in school).
I live in a simple one bedroom apartment with furnishings given to me by family members or found by the dumpsters in my apartment complex (you can get some decent furniture that way). I don't buy the latest electronics, have cable, or go on vacations. I rarely eat out, or even go out at all. I feel like I live generally very frugally. Based on this, I had actually decided that yes, surely I could call myself poor, and have done so when a friend would suggest we do an expensive activity.
Seeing this has given me pause. Can I really be "poor" if I have readily available drinking water, a temperature controlled place to live, and easily obtainable food? I wouldn't call it pointless, I think it provides a global prospective, and helps reframe what "rich" and "poor" mean. Americans are indeed privileged, and we should recognize that.
Craig — November 30, 2009
I feel immensely wealthy, with my 1300 square foot house and my spiffy new Honda Fit--to say nothing of my medical insurance, access to the Internet, clean water, good food, and so forth. I've been to Europe a few times and Hawaii twice. I received a comprehensive primary education free of charge, and a very reasonably priced college degree from a state university. And I don't know what kind of price you put on living in a country that hasn't experienced a civil war or foreign invasion in over a hundred years.
If I start envying a friend's slightly higher standard of living in one area or another, I just try to remember my tour of Heiffer Project International's headquarters facility in Little Rock, Arkansas. They have an amazing weekend exercise for youth groups where the kids draw lots and are assigned to a reproduction of a family home from Southeast Asia, the slums of Mexico City, Guatemala, and so forth: the "rich" family gets a tiny cinderblock home with a coldwater sink and a gas burner.
You can handwave about comparitive standards of living all you want, but at some level, people, we have to get a grip on ourselves. Two dollars won't buy a bottle of water? I will personally sell you, for a tenth that price, a whole _gallon_ of water of such quality that nine tenths of the world would just about _kill_ to have it flowing through their homes. Griping about the price of bottled water...who says we're pampered and decadent?
Linda — December 30, 2009
It's an interesting concept, but I wouldn't call the program flawless- when I entered an annual income of $1, I was informed that I was the richest person in the world.