The Perspective Machine ← the machine

Income in Paraguay

The median income in Paraguay is about $14 a day per person (2021 PPP dollars) — richer than 68% of everyone alive. Half of Paraguay lives on less than that.

The world's own median person — about $7.73 a day — would stand in the bottom 20% of Paraguay.

Place your own income in Paraguay →

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

Richer than…per year, per personper day (PPP $)
10% of ParaguayPYG 6,962,142$5.58
25% of ParaguayPYG 10,967,245$8.79
50% of ParaguayPYG 17,717,278$14
75% of ParaguayPYG 28,697,000$23
90% of ParaguayPYG 46,414,277$37
99% of ParaguayPYG 187,528,653$150

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

The four levels in Paraguay

How much of Paraguay 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, worldwideParaguayWorld
Level 1under $3.00a fire to cook on, water carried home from the well, everywhere on foot2%13%
Level 2$3.00–$8.30a bicycle, a gas canister for the stove, a tap within walking distance20%39%
Level 3$8.30–$33a motorbike, a gas stove, a bank account65%32%
Level 4$33+a car, a fridge, hot water from the tap13%15%

About 65% of Paraguay lives on Level 3, between $8.30 and $33 a day per person; worldwide, about 32% of people do.

The line that moved

In Paraguay, 2.5% lived under the $3.00 line at the 1990 survey and 2.1% at the 2024 one — it has barely moved.

50% 0 1990 today

Share of Paraguay 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/paraguay/" title="Income in Paraguay — 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 Paraguay (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 Paraguay's — and a few far from it, for scale.

North MacedoniaThailandDominican RepublicBhutanBosnia and HerzegovinaBrazilSwitzerlandfor scaleIndiafor scale

All 145 countries