Global inequality: median income, GDP per capita and the Gini index explained

France's GDP per capita stands at €43,350 a year[1]Eurostat (2026). GDP per capita, current euros, 2025 (provisional), nama_10_pc.. Yet half the French population lives on less than €26,740 a year, or €2,228 a month[2]INSEE (2026). Insee Première No. 2117: standard of living, inequality and poverty in 2024.. Both figures are correct; they simply measure different things.

Marie D'ovidio

Mieux Donner · Reading time: 10 min

This gap helps explain why official statistics sometimes sit so uneasily with what households experience. Four indicators help make sense of it: GDP per capita, median income, the Gini index and purchasing power parity. Here is what each one measures and what it leaves out, with France as the reference point.

GDP per capita: useful, but it does not tell you what people earn

What GDP measures, and what it misses

Gross domestic product (GDP) adds up the value of everything a country produces in a year; divide it by the population and you get GDP per capita. It is the figure that comes up whenever people compare how rich countries are.

It has two limitations. First, it measures output, not income: part of that wealth goes to businesses, investment or the state, and never reaches household bank accounts. Second, it ignores anything that does not go through a market. Looking after your children or caring for an elderly parent does not count, and the pollution that damages a city's health is not subtracted either. In 2009, Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen and Jean-Paul Fitoussi chaired a commission that was already urging statisticians to put more emphasis on the household perspective and to extend income measures to non-market activities such as domestic work[3]Stiglitz, J., Sen, A. and Fitoussi, J.-P. (2009). Report by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, recommen.... Other approaches measure life satisfaction directly: every year, the World Happiness Report ranks countries by the score people give their own lives[4]Helliwell, J. F. et al. (2026). World Happiness Report 2026. Wellbeing Research Centre (University of Oxford), Gallup, UN SDSN..

France compared with the rest of the world

In purchasing power parity terms (see below), France's GDP per capita is about two and a half times the world average[5]World Bank (2026). GDP per capita, PPP (constant 2021 international $), NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KD.. That figure places the country in the rankings. However, to see how this wealth is shared among the people who live there, you need to look at income.

Mean or median income: why the median is more representative

The village and the billionaire

Imagine a village of 500 people, each earning €20,000 a year. One day, someone earning €50 million a year moves in.

The village's mean income jumps to almost €120,000, yet nobody apart from the newcomer has earned a single extra euro. The median income stays at €20,000.

Because the mean adds up every income and divides by the number of people, a handful of very high incomes is enough to pull it up. The median splits the population in two: half earn less, half earn more. It gives a better picture of an ordinary person's situation, and it is the measure that INSEE, France's national statistics office, uses to describe living standards. The Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi commission already considered the median a better measure[3]Stiglitz, J., Sen, A. and Fitoussi, J.-P. (2009). Report by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, recommen....

The gap shows up at global level too. According to World Bank data, mean global income is more than twice median global income[6]World Bank (2026). Poverty and Inequality Platform, global aggregates for 2024 (mean and calculated median)..

Income or standard of living: how INSEE measures it

In France, INSEE compares standards of living rather than salaries. A household's standard of living is its disposable income, after taxes and social benefits, divided by its number of "consumption units"[7]INSEE. Definition: standard of living (niveau de vie).. The first adult counts as 1, each additional person aged 14 or over as 0.5, and each child under 14 as 0.3[8]INSEE. Definition: consumption unit (unité de consommation).. A couple with two young children therefore counts as 2.1 units: a family of four does not pay four rents.

On this basis, the median standard of living in France was €26,740 a year in 2024, or €2,228 a month[2]INSEE (2026). Insee Première No. 2117: standard of living, inequality and poverty in 2024..

Standard of living is not the same thing as salary. In the same year, the median net salary was €2,190 a month in the private sector, on a full-time equivalent basis[9]INSEE (2025). Insee Première No. 2079: private-sector salaries in 2024.. The two amounts are close, but they describe different people. Salary covers employees only and takes no account of household size, taxes or benefits. Standard of living covers the whole population, including children, retirees and people without a job, and takes in all household income.

What the gap between GDP and median income shows

Median income is far below GDP per capita everywhere, but the size of the gap varies widely. In France, median income is about 38% of GDP per capita. In Nigeria and South Africa it is around 16% and 17%, partly because both countries are measured on consumption rather than income[10]World Bank (2026). World Development Indicators and Poverty and Inequality Platform (2021 PPP), via Our World in Data.. Two countries with similar GDP per capita can therefore offer very different living conditions to the person in the middle of the distribution.

The Gini index: measuring gaps within a country

How to read it

The Gini index sums up in a single number how income is distributed within a country. It runs from 0, when everyone has exactly the same income, to 1, when one person has everything[11]World Bank. Gini index metadata (SI.POV.GINI)..

It is calculated from the Lorenz curve. You rank the population from poorest to richest, then look at the share of total income that each fraction of the population receives. The further the curve moves away from a perfectly equal distribution, the higher the Gini index.

France compared with its neighbours

France's Gini index for living standards reached 0.302 in 2024, its second consecutive rise and its highest level since 1996[2]INSEE (2026). Insee Première No. 2117: standard of living, inequality and poverty in 2024.. The poverty rate stood at 15.4%: 9.8 million people live on less than €1,337 a month, a level not seen in almost thirty years[2]INSEE (2026). Insee Première No. 2117: standard of living, inequality and poverty in 2024..

The richest 20% receive 38.8% of total living standards; the poorest 20% receive 8.4%[2]INSEE (2026). Insee Première No. 2117: standard of living, inequality and poverty in 2024..

On the European measure, which allows countries to be compared with one another, France sits slightly above the EU average (0.29). It is level with Germany (0.30), Italy and Spain (0.31), and well above Belgium (0.23)[12]Eurostat (2026). Gini coefficient of equivalised disposable income, EU-SILC 2025, ilc_di12..

The most and least unequal countries

In recent World Bank data, Colombia (0.54 in 2024) and South Africa (0.54 in 2022) are among the most unequal countries. At the other end are Slovakia (0.24) and India (0.23), both in 2023[13]World Bank (2026). Gini index, SI.POV.GINI..

What the Gini index does not tell you

India and Slovakia have almost the same Gini index, yet people in the two countries live on very different means. The Gini index describes how income is shared, whatever its level: a country can be both very equal and very poor.

It should also be compared with care. For most low- and middle-income countries, the World Bank measures household consumption; for rich countries, it measures income[14]Our World in Data. Gini coefficient.. However, consumption is generally less unequal than income[11]World Bank. Gini index metadata (SI.POV.GINI)., which partly explains India's very low Gini index.

Purchasing power parity: comparing like with like

The shopping basket principle

A haircut or a month's rent costs far less in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, than in Lyon. Converting incomes at market exchange rates would therefore make people in lower-cost countries look poorer than they are.

Purchasing power parity (PPP) corrects this bias by comparing the price of the same basket of goods and services across countries[15]World Bank (2024). Global purchasing power parities data released for 2021.. The World Bank expresses its data in "international dollars". In any country, one international dollar buys what one US dollar bought in the United States in a reference year, here 2021[10]World Bank (2026). World Development Indicators and Poverty and Inequality Platform (2021 PPP), via Our World in Data.. The latest price survey covered 176 economies[15]World Bank (2024). Global purchasing power parities data released for 2021..

In this article, we have converted these amounts into euros at 2025 French prices[16]Mieux Donner calculation: 2021 international dollars × 2021 PPP conversion factor for France (0.792; World Bank, PA.NUS.PRVT.PP) × French inflation.... "€2.70 a day" should therefore be read as what €2.70 buys in France today.

Even with PPP, the gaps remain huge

Once the cost of living is taken into account, median income in Luxembourg is still about 68 times higher than in the Democratic Republic of the Congo[10]World Bank (2026). World Development Indicators and Poverty and Inequality Platform (2021 PPP), via Our World in Data.. Part of this gap comes from the method, since the DRC is measured on consumption, but the order of magnitude stands.

The four indicators at a glance

Between countries: the gap that matters most

Nearly half the world lives on less than €7.50 a day

In 2024, 46.2% of the world's population lived on less than €7.47 a day at equivalent French prices[17]World Bank (2026). Poverty and Inequality Platform, share of the world population below $8.30 a day, 2024.. This is the line the World Bank uses for upper-middle-income countries.

The extreme poverty line

Since June 2025, the World Bank has set the extreme poverty line at 3 international dollars a day, up from $2.15[18]World Bank (2025). June 2025 update to global poverty lines.. Converted, that comes to €2.70 a day, or €985 a year[16]Mieux Donner calculation: 2021 international dollars × 2021 PPP conversion factor for France (0.792; World Bank, PA.NUS.PRVT.PP) × French inflation.... In 2024, 824 million people lived below this line, roughly one person in ten[19]World Bank (2026). Poverty and Inequality Platform, global extreme poverty, 2024.. In sub-Saharan Africa, the figure is 45% of the population[20]World Bank (2026). Poverty and Inequality Platform, sub-Saharan Africa, 2024..

What changes when you look at the world as a whole

Within France, a person on the median standard of living is, by definition, in the middle. According to our income comparison tool, a single person with that income is better off than 95% of the world's population.

This ranking says nothing about how hard it is to pay rent in Paris or to make ends meet. In France, people living in poverty generally have access to healthcare, schools and clean water. These protections are imperfect, but they are often far weaker in the regions where most people in extreme poverty live.

What these figures mean for your giving

These gaps have a direct consequence for donors: a euro goes much further where basic needs are not met. There, a modest sum pays for a mosquito net or for vitamin A supplementation. In Doing Good Better, William MacAskill estimates that you can have up to a hundred times more impact by giving to low-income countries rather than rich ones[21]MacAskill, W. (2015). Doing Good Better, chapter 1, "The 100x multiplier", cited by Giving What We Can (2021)..

A second gap adds to this one, within the same cause: the charities we recommend in global health are estimated to be around 100 times more effective than an average charity in the same field.

We explain this reasoning in more detail, with GiveWell's figures, in our article Why our recommendations don't target beneficiaries in wealthy countries.

Frequently asked questions

This article draws on "Measuring global inequality" by Giving What We Can (Hazell and Holmes, 2021). The data have been updated and adapted to the French context.