How much money do you need to earn to be in the one per cent around the world?

by Bethan McKernan-04 June 2015

So, how much money really puts you in the top one per cent of a country’s earners?

Turns out it varies a lot depending on where you live - and the figure may not be as much as you think.

Economist Branko Milanovic, a professor at the City University of New York, figured out what salary you need to earn to be in the top percentile depending on taxes and the cost of living for the country you live in.

In the UK, you need to take home £76,971 a year to be among the richest one per cent in the country.

Of course that figure doesn’t include property, interest earned from investments, or selling stocks and bonds - and Five Thirty Eight believes 36 per cent of the super rich’s income comes from that capital, rather than wages.

People who make around £77,000 after tax include pilots, and directors in sectors like marketing and IT. They’re not necessarily the CEOs and bankers on Wall Street the Occupy movement sprang up to challenge.

The richest person in the world is Bill Gates, who is worth £56.6 billion. He earned just under £1 billion last year just from selling some of his Microsoft shares, 13,000 times as much as an airline pilot in the UK. But they’d still sit in the same top one per cent category.

In Russia you ‘only’ need £30,120 a year to be in the same economic set as President Vladimir Putin.

It is the super-wealthy 0.1 per cent that Oxfam says we should be keeping our eye on.

The charity found that the richest 85 people on the planet own as much as the poorest 3.5billion people in the world. This tiny elite would fit comfortable on a double decker bus - not that they have probably ever taken one.