Proportion of people living below 50 percent of median income (%) by country

What this measures

The percentage of people in the population who live in households whose per capita income or consumption is below half of the median income or consumption per capita. The median is measured at 2021 Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) using the Poverty and Inequality Platform (http://www.pip.worldbank.org). For some countries, medians are not reported due to grouped and/or confidential data. The reference year is the year in which the underlying household survey data was collected. In cases for which the data collection period bridged two calendar years, the first year in which data were collected is reported.

Limitations: Despite progress in the last decade, the challenges of measuring poverty remain. The timeliness, frequency, quality, and comparability of household surveys need to increase substantially, particularly in the poorest countries. The availability and quality of poverty monitoring data remains low in small states, countries with fragile situations, and low-income countries and even some middle-income countries. The low frequency and lack of comparability of the data available in some countries create uncertainty over the magnitude of poverty reduction. Besides the frequency and timeliness of survey data, other data quality issues arise in measuring household living standards.

Each country's latest available year is shown; countries report on different schedules, so compare years before comparing values.

Ranking

More poverty indicators

• Income share held by second 20%
• Income share held by third 20%
• Income share held by fourth 20%
• Income share held by highest 20%
• Income share held by highest 10%
• Income share held by lowest 10%
• Income share held by lowest 20%
• Poverty headcount ratio at $3.00 a day (2021 PPP) (% of population)
• Poverty gap at $3.00 a day (2021 PPP) (%)
• Gini index
• Poverty headcount ratio at $4.20 a day (2021 PPP) (% of population)
• Poverty gap at $4.20 a day (2021 PPP) (%)

Reading data like this

• Where to find free public data, and how to check it before you trust it — 2 min read
• Data analysis examples: 6 worked from one dataset — 3 min read

Source

World Bank, World Development Indicators, SI.DST.50MD, CC BY 4.0. Original source: World Bank, Poverty and Inequality Platform. Data are based on primary household survey data obtained from government statistical agencies and World Bank country departments. Data for high-income economies are mostly from the Luxembourg Income Study database. View on data.worldbank.org; the full definition is in the World Bank's metadata glossary.