Dollar Street: Photos as Data to Kill Country Stereotypes
Photos of items from families in different countries with different incomes
We visited 264 families across 50 countries to collect 30,000 photos, sorting homes by income to reveal how people really live. This project challenges the notion that cultures in other countries are stranger than they appear, showing that income levels often matter more than nationality when comparing daily life and living conditions.
In the news people in other cultures seem stranger than they are.
- stuxnet79
Note that some of the entries here are clearly outdated. I've cycled through some "global south" countries that I'm familiar with and what's shown may have been true maybe 15-20 years ago. GDP has 4x since then and at the same salary level the lifestyle is either equivalent or better than the richer countries.
- binary132
Concepts based on this take no account whatsoever of the differences in currencies and local/national economies that lead to incredibly different costs of normal life in different towns within a state, let alone between different countries around the world. If it were somehow possible to magically level USD incomes of all families depicted in this chart, perhaps to an arbitrary median of $2500/mo, many of the poorest families would be very wealthy — or at least very well-off — by their local standards, while many of the high-income families would lose their homes, healthcare, and means of income due to their local costs of living. It’s always so strange to me that people seem unable to comprehend this simple fact that nearly all of our international economics today are predicated on exploiting.
- forshaper
I've generally loved this site. Wondering what other distributions could be made so visual, where people near the top complain about the people just above them.
- smusamashah
Click the Families dropdown. There are many other things, including beds, pets, toys and teeth.
- onraglanroad
To give context on my other comments, where I live in Scotland, median full time wage is around $55k.
You can live a perfectly comfortable life on that; you don't have to worry about bills or medical expenses, and you can afford to get a mortgage and buy a house (probably costing around $300k or so)
That's why I'm surprised about people from a richer nation saying they can't afford things.