) But he got his facts about money embarrassingly wrong on Twitter Friday.
Novogratz tweeted the shocking claim that making just $ , annually puts you in the top 1% of income earners globally. While that would certainly put things in perspective if it were true, the world is not actually that poor.
Source: Twitter when someone expressed their disbelief in the shocking claim, Novogratz dug in his heels. He insisted that most of the world “doesn’t make too much.” Source: (Twitter
But he did not cite a source for his global income claim in the original tweet or his follow up reply. So where is he getting his information from?
Novogratz Gets Income Wrong
(Source:) GlobalRichList
Reviewing the top search results for statistics on global income percentiles, it seems that Novogratz got his incorrect figures from a website called GlobalRichList.
It lets you enter your annual income and tells you your global percentile. GlobalRichList claims earning $ , a year makes you the , , th richest person on earth. It doesn’t make it clear whether that’s $ 59, 03 in individual or household income. The U.S. Census bureau’s income percentile tables are based on household income. GlobalRichList merely says N – th “richest person” on earth by income, and claims:
You’re in the top 1. % richest people in the world by income .
But GlobalRichList doesn’t cite any source for its data either. Some number crunchers on a six-year-old Reddit thread point out that U.S. Census data on income
contradicts this website’s readouts .
StasticalAtlas.com, which presents data from the US Census Bureau, says an annual income of $ , puts you in the (th percentile) or the top 32% of US Hotels.
By rough estimates, it still seems plausible that making a little less than a third of that could put someone in the top 1% worldwide. But if you enter $ , into GlobalRichList, it says you’re in the top 0. % of income earners worldwide and that only 4, 624, make this amount or more.
The US) population was (million in
, the year the US household income statistics above were gathered. Accordingly, the U.S. Census Bureau reports 107 .8 million households in the US alone made $ , or more in . So GlobalRichList’s worldwide total of only 4.5 million earning this amount or more is way off.
That’s most likely so even if the website is counting individual income while the Census is counting households with combined income. If you divide $ , by the average number of 2. people per US household in , you get $ , 309. GlobalRichList says there are only , 823, 586 people in the world making that much a year.
There’s A Lot Of Money Out There Swedish academic Hans Rosling lecture about the dramatic decline in Poverty.
Furthermore, Business Insider reported earlier this month that you would would have to earn $ , annually to be in the top 1% in India alone and $ , to be a one-percenter in China. Those are two of the countries Novogratz cites to give you the sense that his $ 77, 03 figure must be true.
The “bad news” is you’re not as relatively wealthy as Novogratz claims. The good news is the world is not nearly as poor as he claims. There’s an absolute ocean of money out there, even in countries the wealthiest nations’ citizens think of as poor.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of CCN.com.
This article was edited by (Sam Bourgi) , (Samburaj Das) .
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