The Perspective Machine ← the machine

Income in Mongolia

The median income in Mongolia is about $10 a day per person (2021 PPP dollars) — richer than 59% of everyone alive. Half of Mongolia lives on less than that.

The world's own median person — about $7.73 a day — would stand in the bottom 30% of Mongolia.

Place your own income in Mongolia →

Your number never leaves your device; the machine runs entirely in the browser.

The curve

$1$10$100 median

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 MNT, at each point on the curve of Mongolia (the machine's convention: household take-home divided by the people it supports).

Richer than…per year, per personper day (PPP $)
10% of MongoliaMNT 2,665,157$5.20
25% of MongoliaMNT 3,687,655$7.20
50% of MongoliaMNT 5,304,688$10
75% of MongoliaMNT 7,662,327$15
90% of MongoliaMNT 10,942,520$21
99% of MongoliaMNT 24,140,174$47

Rounded, never inflated: the machine floors "richer than" claims.

The four levels in Mongolia

How much of Mongolia 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.

Levelper day (PPP $)What tends to come with it, worldwideMongoliaWorld
Level 1under $3.00a fire to cook on, water carried home from the well, everywhere on foot1%13%
Level 2$3.00–$8.30a bicycle, a gas canister for the stove, a tap within walking distance34%39%
Level 3$8.30–$33a motorbike, a gas stove, a bank account63%32%
Level 4$33+a car, a fridge, hot water from the tap2%15%

About 63% of Mongolia lives on Level 3, between $8.30 and $33 a day per person; worldwide, about 32% of people do.

The line that moved

In Mongolia, 22% lived under the $3.00 line at the 1995 survey; under 1% at the 2022 one — a fall of 21 points in 27 years.

50% 0 1990 today

Share of Mongolia 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/mongolia/" title="Income in Mongolia — 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 Mongolia (survey year 2022), 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 Mongolia's — and a few far from it, for scale.

MoldovaLebanonIraqColombiaKazakhstanEcuadorSwitzerlandfor scaleIndiafor scale

All 145 countries