Income in Iran
The median income in Iran is about $11 a day per person (2021 PPP dollars) — richer than 62% of everyone alive. Half of Iran lives on less than that.
The world's own median person — about $7.73 a day — would stand in the bottom 26% of Iran.
Place your own income in Iran →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 IRR, at each point on the curve of Iran (the machine's convention: household take-home divided by the people it supports).
| Richer than… | per year, per person | per day (PPP $) |
|---|---|---|
| 10% of Iran | IRR 355,414,565 | $5.19 |
| 25% of Iran | IRR 520,110,525 | $7.59 |
| 50% of Iran | IRR 777,255,360 | $11 |
| 75% of Iran | IRR 1,160,746,991 | $17 |
| 90% of Iran | IRR 1,722,288,308 | $25 |
| 99% of Iran | IRR 5,023,055,562 | $73 |
Rounded, never inflated: the machine floors "richer than" claims.
The four levels in Iran
How much of Iran 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 | Iran | World |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Level 1 | under $3.00 | a fire to cook on, water carried home from the well, everywhere on foot | 2% | 13% |
| Level 2 | $3.00–$8.30 | a bicycle, a gas canister for the stove, a tap within walking distance | 28% | 39% |
| Level 3 | $8.30–$33 | a motorbike, a gas stove, a bank account | 65% | 32% |
| Level 4 | $33+ | a car, a fridge, hot water from the tap | 5% | 15% |
- Level 1 · under $3.00 a dayIran 2% · World 13%a fire to cook on, water carried home from the well, everywhere on foot
- Level 2 · $3.00–$8.30 a dayIran 28% · World 39%a bicycle, a gas canister for the stove, a tap within walking distance
- Level 3 · $8.30–$33 a dayIran 65% · World 32%a motorbike, a gas stove, a bank account
- Level 4 · $33+ a dayIran 5% · World 15%a car, a fridge, hot water from the tap
About 65% of Iran lives on Level 3, between $8.30 and $33 a day per person; worldwide, about 32% of people do.
The line that moved
In Iran, 22% lived under the $3.00 line at the 1990 survey; 2.5% at the 2023 one — a fall of 19 points in 33 years.
Share of Iran 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.
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/iran/" title="Income in Iran — 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 Iran (survey year 2023), 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 Iran's — and a few far from it, for scale.