How it’s calculated

Every number on RicherThan comes from public, authoritative data. Nothing is invented, nothing is stored, and where the data is uncertain we say so.

Where you stand

We convert your household income to a per-person figure, then to international dollars using the World Bank’s purchasing-power-parity (PPP) factors for your country and year — so a dollar buys a comparable basket of goods everywhere. That figure is placed on the World Bank’s global income distribution to find the share of people who live on less than you do: your percentile.

What we deliberately don’t do

• No fake precision — figures are estimates, shown as ranges where it matters.
• The very top (≈ the richest 1%) is under-captured by household surveys, so we never draw it to scale; the chart simply runs out and says so.
• Income is not wealth — these are different distributions, and we only claim income.
• Nothing you enter is sent anywhere or stored. It stays in your browser.

Data & sources

• Global income distribution — World Bank Poverty & Inequality Platform (PIP), 2021 PPP, reporting year 2024 (data version 20260324_2021_01_02_PROD). CC BY 4.0. pip.worldbank.org
• PPP & price conversion — World Bank World Development Indicators (WDI). CC BY 4.0.
• Income across history — Maddison Project Database (Bolt & van Zanden) via Our World in Data. CC BY 4.0.
• Country currencies & coordinates — mledoze/countries.
• Country & region codes — ISO-3166 dataset (lukes).
• Flags — circle-flags by HatScripts. MIT.
• Earth textures — day, clouds & specular by Planet Pixel Emporium (James Hastings-Trew); night lights by Solar System Scope, CC BY 4.0.

“How rare is what you have?” — the scarcity scroll

Each card shows a real, published figure, rounded and labelled with its base (people, adults, households, or objects). A share (“X% have it”) compares to the total of that base; “1 in N” counts objects or people; “ever” counts everyone in recorded history, set against the ~117 billion people who have ever lived. Where a figure is an industry estimate rather than an official statistic, treat it as a ballpark.

• Basics — electricity, clean cooking, drinking water, sanitation, handwashing — WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme and the World Bank / IEA SDG-7 tracking, via Our World in Data.
• Literacy — UNESCO Institute for Statistics · childhood vaccination (DTP3) — WHO/UNICEF · undernourishment — FAO.
• Bank & mobile-money accounts, saving, credit cards — World Bank Global Findex.
• Internet, mobile internet, smartphones — ITU and GSMA · urban population — UN World Urbanization Prospects.
• Household goods — TV, fridge, washing machine, computer, air-conditioning, bicycle — national censuses/surveys and IEA (cooling), via Our World in Data; treat as estimates.
• Poverty lines — World Bank PIP · legal ID — World Bank ID4D · open defecation — WHO/UNICEF JMP.
• Vehicles — cars & motor vehicles — OICA (vehicles in use); electric cars — IEA Global EV Outlook (object counts, not owners).
• Homeownership by country — Eurostat, 2023 (share of population in owner-occupied homes).
• Pets & animals (dogs, cats, horses) — pet-industry estimates and FAO; ballpark figures.
• Wealth — millionaires, $50M+, billionaires — UBS Global Wealth Report and Forbes.
• Luxury objects — private jets, helicopters, yachts & superyachts, ultra-luxury & new cars — general-aviation and marine industry fleet data; estimates.
• Second homes, pools, centenarians — national census / industry bodies and the UN World Population Prospects.
• Climbed Everest (and deaths trying) — the Himalayan Database · been to space / 24 to the Moon — NASA & spaceflight records · Nobel laureates — nobelprize.org.
• “Everyone who has ever lived” (~117 billion) — Population Reference Bureau, 2022.

RicherThan is a free, no-login tool made to put income in perspective — not financial advice.