Income in Brazil
The median income in Brazil is about $15 a day per person (2021 PPP dollars) — richer than 69% of everyone alive. Half of Brazil lives on less than that.
The world's own median person — about $7.73 a day — would stand in the bottom 23% of Brazil.
Place your own income in Brazil →Your number never leaves your device; the machine runs entirely in the browser.
The curve
Daily income per person, log scale, PPP dollars — the same curve the machine walks you across.
What it takes to stand where
Take-home income per person, in today's BRL, at each point on the curve of Brazil (the machine's convention: household take-home divided by the people it supports).
| Richer than… | per year, per person | per day (PPP $) |
|---|---|---|
| 10% of Brazil | R$5,283 | $4.71 |
| 25% of Brazil | R$9,283 | $8.29 |
| 50% of Brazil | R$16,582 | $15 |
| 75% of Brazil | R$28,907 | $26 |
| 90% of Brazil | R$53,221 | $48 |
| 99% of Brazil | R$205,599 | $184 |
Rounded, never inflated: the machine floors "richer than" claims.
The four levels in Brazil
How much of Brazil and of the world lives on each of four income levels. The cuts are the World Bank's $3.00 (international poverty line) and $8.30 (upper-middle-income line), both 2021 PPP; the top cut, $33, is the machine's own, four times the $8.30 line. The objects are what an income on each level tends to buy across the world's surveys — not a description of any one country.
| Level | per day (PPP $) | What tends to come with it, worldwide | Brazil | World |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Level 1 | under $3.00 | a fire to cook on, water carried home from the well, everywhere on foot | 4% | 13% |
| Level 2 | $3.00–$8.30 | a bicycle, a gas canister for the stove, a tap within walking distance | 21% | 39% |
| Level 3 | $8.30–$33 | a motorbike, a gas stove, a bank account | 57% | 32% |
| Level 4 | $33+ | a car, a fridge, hot water from the tap | 18% | 15% |
- Level 1 · under $3.00 a dayBrazil 4% · World 13%a fire to cook on, water carried home from the well, everywhere on foot
- Level 2 · $3.00–$8.30 a dayBrazil 21% · World 39%a bicycle, a gas canister for the stove, a tap within walking distance
- Level 3 · $8.30–$33 a dayBrazil 57% · World 32%a motorbike, a gas stove, a bank account
- Level 4 · $33+ a dayBrazil 18% · World 15%a car, a fridge, hot water from the tap
About 57% of Brazil lives on Level 3, between $8.30 and $33 a day per person; worldwide, about 32% of people do.
The line that moved
In Brazil, 30% lived under the $3.00 line at the 1990 survey; 3.0% at the 2024 one — a fall of 27 points in 34 years.
Share of Brazil under $3.00 a day (2021 prices) at each national survey, World Bank PIP via Our World in Data; the faint line is the world's.
Worldwide, the share under the World Bank's $3.00-a-day line fell from about 43% in 1990 to about 10% today (Our World in Data; the latest years are the Bank's nowcast). Where the lift came, it came the unglamorous way: wages, harvests, workshops.
Who earns what in Brazil
8 portraits, not payroll data: each stands roughly where that kind of work typically earns on the curve of Brazil.
| the lowest 10% | the earnings of a cassava farmer in the Northeast — harvesting under serious sun |
|---|---|
| 10–25% | the earnings of a domestic worker in São Paulo — commuting two hours each way |
| 25–45% | the earnings of a motoboy courier — threading traffic the rest of the city fears |
| 45–65% | the earnings of a shop manager |
| 65–82% | the earnings of a nurse in a public hospital |
| 82–93% | the earnings of a civil engineer — her bridges outlast governments |
| 93–98% | the earnings of a judge or senior doctor |
| the highest 2% | the earnings of an agribusiness owner — whose soy crosses oceans |
Embed this
A compact, live version of this page — the curve, the median, the four levels, a country picker — for an article or a newsletter. Paste the snippet; in WordPress and Ghost, pasting this page's URL is enough (it unfurls into the widget via oEmbed). Nothing anyone types into the machine ever reaches the host page, or us.
<iframe src="https://theperspectivemachine.com/embed/brazil/" title="Income in Brazil — The Perspective Machine" width="100%" height="440" style="border:0;max-width:680px;border-radius:14px" loading="lazy"></iframe>
<script>addEventListener("message",function(e){if(e.origin==="https://theperspectivemachine.com"&&e.data&&e.data.type==="pm-embed"){var f=document.querySelector('iframe[src*="/embed/'+e.data.slug+'/"]');if(f)f.style.height=e.data.height+"px"}})</script>Preview the widget · About embedding
Where this comes from
The World Bank's Poverty and Inequality Platform percentile distribution for Brazil (survey year 2024), in 2021 PPP dollars; incomes typed in today's money are deflated to 2021 prices with the national CPI and converted with the 2021 consumption-PPP factor. Snapshot fetched September 2026. Full methodology & honesty rules.
Neighbours on the curve
The countries whose median income sits nearest to Brazil's — and a few far from it, for scale.