Photos of items from families in different countries with different incomes

https://www.gapminder.org/dollar-street

by uneven9434 • 6 days ago

119 61 6 days ago

forshaper• 6 days ago

I've generally loved this site. Wondering what other distributions could be made so visual, where people near the top complain about the people just above them.

qurren10• 6 days ago

It's interesting that $14000/month is "rich" on this website, and some people earning $100/month actually own houses.

Meanwhile people making $50000/month in San Francisco can't afford a house because half of it is taxed away and housing is astronomically expensive.

EPWN3D• 6 days ago

I promise you that someone in SF making $50k/month can comfortably afford a very nice house.

qurren10• 6 days ago

I promise you not. Houses here cost $2M+ for something livable and $1M for something with mold and other safety issues.

When half that $50K gets taxed, half of what's remaining has to be saved up for retirement in a place that deeply discriminates against age, you don't have much left to save up for buying a $2M house.

onraglanroad7• 6 days ago

If your net pay is $7000 per month you absolutely can afford to own a house, you're just being fussy about the house you want.

qurren10• 6 days ago

You're not going to save up for a $1-2M house very fast on $7000/month, when you also have to live off that $7K, pay rent, pay medical bills, and save up for retirement expenses.

burner420042• 6 days ago

Does the website reference net or gross monthly income?

Edit:

So the numbers are not a direct exchange rate to USD.

Q: How were dollar values assigned to households? A: The households’ door numbers represent the consumption values (US dollars) that each adult in the household has per month. This figure comes from a combination of the household’s self-reported consumption and income levels. We then checked the official cost of living data in each country to adjust the values for purchasing power parity (PPP) and converted the value into US dollars. Read more about how we assigned the Dollar Street values here.

drivebyhooting• 6 days ago

If you’re gonna have kids, fussy means: * have decent schools * not covered in lead or asbestos * not next to a highway

jt2190• 6 days ago

The housing market is highly dependent on the job market so no, it’s not “being fussy”, it’s “I need to live here so I can have a job and income”. Unless you’re suggesting that people should quit their jobs and go get that cheap house in the middle of nowhere?

jltsiren• 6 days ago

Its more about where you want to live.

I'm not familiar with the situation in San Francisco. But in Santa Cruz, the cost to own with a 20% down payment is ~50% higher than the rent for the same unit. If you can't afford a substantially higher down payment, you're not really in the market for a home.

With $7k/month after tax, you would probably be renting an 1br, or maybe a cheap 2br. But your income is not high enough to buy anything, unless you start looking for homes well outside the town.

tjohns• 6 days ago

You have it backwards. Housing is astronomically expensive in San Francisco precisely because there are so many people with high incomes bidding against each other.

When you have a highly inelastic supply (constrained by zoning laws, density limits, and geographical boundaries), prices rise to the maximum margin of what the highest-income buyers are capable of paying.

Regarding taxes: Since taxes apply to all local high-earners equally, it doesn't change their relative purchasing power against one another in the local housing market. If taxes were suddenly halved, that extra liquidity would be priced into the next bidding war, driving home prices even higher.

tenuousemphasis4• 6 days ago

Globally, $14k/mo is unbelievably, obscenely rich.

joncp• 6 days ago

Whoa, nice reminder of how filthy rich I and almost everyone I know are.

stuxnet79• 6 days ago

Note that some of the entries here are clearly outdated. I've cycled through some "global south" countries that I'm familiar with and what's shown may have been true maybe 15-20 years ago. GDP has 4x since then and at the same salary level the lifestyle is either equivalent or better than the richer countries.

bellowsgulch• 6 days ago

I observed the same. There are "poor" countries listed here that would make large swaths of Americans look like they still lived pre-WWII, and were destitute.

Edit: Sorry, to be more explicit: by global standards large swaths of Americans DO live pre-WWII lives and have poorly constructed homes and lifestyles.

dzonga• 6 days ago

yeah some things are old - but still important documentation of how some people live.

mmooss• 6 days ago

Typically in developing economies, economic growth is very unevenly distributed. I would expect that in an economy that has grown 4x, many people would not experience any economic growth at all. I would be very surprised if that didn't happen - if rapid economic growth was that evenly distributed. And governments, especially in developing countries with little accumulated wealth and little credit, cannot afford to raise the standard of living of large numbers of people through welfare programs.

onraglanroad7• 6 days ago

To give context on my other comments, where I live in Scotland, median full time wage is around $55k.

You can live a perfectly comfortable life on that; you don't have to worry about bills or medical expenses, and you can afford to get a mortgage and buy a house (probably costing around $300k or so)

That's why I'm surprised about people from a richer nation saying they can't afford things.

Pooge• 6 days ago

That's why I'm surprised about people from a richer nation saying they can't afford things

If you had the same salary in Switzerland or Luxembourg which, believe it or not, is not impossible, there would be a lot of items that you can't afford. Salary is important but cost of living matters as well. Granted, inside the same country, figures could change drastically but people tend to live where there are lots of job opportunities where it's more expensive.

DontchaKnowit2• 6 days ago

How can you afford a 300k mortgage at 55k a year. That would be a very large percent of monthly pay right?

tenuousemphasis4• 6 days ago

Mortgages are generally paid over 30 years.

onraglanroad7• 6 days ago

Yes, houses are expensive, but it's not out of reach. You can afford a mortgage on the average home.

librasteve• 6 days ago

The median income in Southern England is comparable, but house prices are 2-3x higher. Not surprising that we moan about tax subsidies getting paid to folk with a better lifestyle.

onraglanroad7• 6 days ago

If it helps, think of it less as Subsidy and more as Tribute!

cliglot• 6 days ago

Expecting to own a high end house in a dense metro are on its own, is a pretty insane expectation.

High salaries and an industry boom over the last decade created a sort of whiny arrogance amongst software developers, and particularly those of Silicon Valley. They desperately want to see themselves as the elite.

Of course the elite get their mansion where they want. They are entitled to it.

smusamashah• 6 days ago

Click the Families dropdown. There are many other things, including beds, pets, toys and teeth.

scotty79• 6 days ago

Modern lifestyle seems to start at $700-$800 per month per adult pretty much everywhere and doesn't get much better even at few k.

dyauspitr• 6 days ago

It depends. In a ridiculously cheap country like India where food prices are hilariously low you can get quite far on $200/month. Fresh vegetables (tomatoes, potatoes, onion, garlic, spinach, squashes, gourds, eggplants etc) are literally an order of magnitude cheaper than what you would find in a cheap American grocery store. You can also get full meals from restaurants for about 30-40c. Medical care is also dirt cheap with most regular doctor visits costing between $1-$2. High end medical care and surgeries for less than $1000 for the whole procedure and stay. The PPP multiplier is something like 6-7x.

RetroTechie• 6 days ago

What's missing in comments:

In developed countries, people buy (or rent) the things they need. Most financial transactions are recorded, taxed, regulated, and with 3rd parties involved at every step (who also expect to get payed). Car insurance, home insurance, electrical bill, etc etc. Grocery prices go up, you pay more. Renting, and rents are raised? Tough.

But in less-developed countries it's not rare for people to grow their own food. They could be living on 0 income & still have food on the table. Swap produce & services with other people in town. No 3rd parties, no taxes (see: informal economy). Build their own home on family-owned land. Insurance? What insurance?

TLDR; there's many flavours & angles on what "poor" or "rich" means in practice.

binary132• 5 days ago

Concepts based on this take no account whatsoever of the differences in currencies and local/national economies that lead to incredibly different costs of normal life in different towns within a state, let alone between different countries around the world. If it were somehow possible to magically level USD incomes of all families depicted in this chart, perhaps to an arbitrary median of $2500/mo, many of the poorest families would be very wealthy — or at least very well-off — by their local standards, while many of the high-income families would lose their homes, healthcare, and means of income due to their local costs of living. It’s always so strange to me that people seem unable to comprehend this simple fact that nearly all of our international economics today are predicated on exploiting.

em-bee3• 5 days ago

what is your point? as far as i can tell the pictures only show the reality. they don't explain why. the interpretation is up to the reader.

my personal experience suggests that cost of living vs living standards is pretty uniform globally if compared on a national level. (at least in the places i have been to. higher cost of living in a country always also meant higher living standards, and vice versa. differences only mattered within a country with popular locations being more expensive, and there mostly it affects the cost for homes.). so your idea that raising poor families to $2500/mo would make them wealthy is only true if they don't try to change their living standards.

and what does that have to do with international economics being based on exploitation? again, that's an interpretation of the things we can see here. i don't disagree with the interpretation, it's just that the photos do not themselves make the interpretation, they only observe.

Photos of items from families in different countries with different incomes

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