Income in Lesotho
The median income in Lesotho is about $3.25 a day per person (2021 PPP dollars) — richer than 15% of everyone alive. Half of Lesotho lives on less than that.
The world's own median person — about $7.73 a day — would stand in the top 16% of Lesotho.
Place your own income in Lesotho →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 LSL, at each point on the curve of Lesotho (the machine's convention: household take-home divided by the people it supports).
| Richer than… | per year, per person | per day (PPP $) |
|---|---|---|
| 10% of Lesotho | LSL 3,084 | $1.14 |
| 25% of Lesotho | LSL 4,910 | $1.81 |
| 50% of Lesotho | LSL 8,778 | $3.25 |
| 75% of Lesotho | LSL 15,744 | $5.82 |
| 90% of Lesotho | LSL 25,441 | $9.40 |
| 99% of Lesotho | LSL 72,902 | $27 |
Rounded, never inflated: the machine floors "richer than" claims.
The four levels in Lesotho
How much of Lesotho 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 | Lesotho | World |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Level 1 | under $3.00 | a fire to cook on, water carried home from the well, everywhere on foot | 46% | 13% |
| Level 2 | $3.00–$8.30 | a bicycle, a gas canister for the stove, a tap within walking distance | 41% | 39% |
| Level 3 | $8.30–$33 | a motorbike, a gas stove, a bank account | 12% | 32% |
| Level 4 | $33+ | a car, a fridge, hot water from the tap | 1% | 15% |
- Level 1 · under $3.00 a dayLesotho 46% · World 13%a fire to cook on, water carried home from the well, everywhere on foot
- Level 2 · $3.00–$8.30 a dayLesotho 41% · World 39%a bicycle, a gas canister for the stove, a tap within walking distance
- Level 3 · $8.30–$33 a dayLesotho 12% · World 32%a motorbike, a gas stove, a bank account
- Level 4 · $33+ a dayLesotho 1% · World 15%a car, a fridge, hot water from the tap
About 46% of Lesotho lives on Level 1, under $3.00 a day per person; worldwide, roughly one in seven people do.
The line that moved
In Lesotho, 60% lived under the $3.00 line at the 1994 survey; 42% at the 2017 one — a fall of 17 points in 23 years.
Share of Lesotho 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/lesotho/" title="Income in Lesotho — 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 Lesotho (survey year 2017), 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 Lesotho's — and a few far from it, for scale.