Every rank in both countries, from Challenger to Iron. Click a row to transfer that rank; click a class name to fold or unfold its tiers. The red cell marks where your income lands in the second country.
Ranks and US incomes follow the original table (household income, US dollars). Other countries are matched on buying power: each country's ladder starts from its median income relative to the US (World Bank Poverty & Inequality Platform median income per person, 2021 PPP dollars) and is stretched or squeezed by its income inequality (World Bank Gini), so a more unequal country gets a taller ladder. The very top (above the top 1%) keeps the US gaps between tiers. Local amounts use PPP conversion factors (local currency per international dollar), so they show what buys the same lifestyle there; the "market USD" figure uses approximate 2026 exchange rates. These are modeled estimates for comparison, not official statistics. Taxes: off by default, so incomes are gross. "After national income tax" deducts each country's national/federal personal income tax for a single filer with the standard personal allowance (2025/26 schedules, simplified; no social-security contributions, deductions or family credits), then matches take-home pay and works out the gross the other country needs. State, provincial and municipal income taxes are shown as an estimated range but not deducted; sales tax / VAT is the standard rate. The ladder is household income, so applying single-filer tax overstates tax for couples. Crime has one filter per type. Homicide is the intentional-homicide rate per 100,000 people (UNODC latest year, mostly 2021-24, via Our World in Data; US states from CDC, Australian states from ABS), grouped very low <1, low <2.5, moderate <5, high <10, very high <20, extreme 20+. The other types (organized crime overall, extortion, arms and human trafficking, drug trade, financial and cyber crime, mafia-style groups, corrupt officials) are scores from the Global Organized Crime Index 2025 (GI-TOC / ENACT, 1 = minimal to 10 = severe), banded very low <3, low <4.5, moderate <6, high <7.5, very high 7.5+. They're national, so regions inherit their country's scores; Taiwan isn't covered by the index. Robbery, assault and burglary aren't offered because countries record them too differently to compare; car theft is offered for OECD members only (OECD regional statistics). Bands: homicide minimal <0.5, very low <1, low <2, guarded <3.5, moderate <6, elevated <12, high <25, extreme 25+; index scores minimal <2.5 up to very high 7.5+ in 1-point steps; car theft minimal <20 up to very high 400+. Each filter keeps the chosen level and safer, and they combine; a place with no data for an active filter is greyed out and left out of the lists rather than assumed safe. Countries outside the original 55 come from World Bank PIP (median income, Gini), World Bank PPP factors and exchange rates, UNODC homicide data and the GI-TOC index; "est." marks incomes estimated from GDP or urban-only surveys. Regional zoom for 28 more countries uses OECD regional statistics (household disposable income per person, homicides and car thefts per 100k, latest year); their price level is the national one, and areas are grouped where the OECD region is larger than the map's unit (e.g. Swiss cantons into 7 regions). Regions (US states): buying power uses BEA Regional Price Parities (state price level vs the US average) and each state's ladder is the US ladder scaled by its median household income (Census ACS); state income tax and average combined sales tax (Tax Foundation) are shown, not deducted. China provinces use NBS disposable income per person with estimated price levels (no official provincial price parity exists); Australia uses ABS Census median household income with estimated state price levels and ABS homicide rates; Japan uses Cabinet Office prefectural income per person and the Statistics Bureau regional price index. China and Japan publish no comparable regional homicide rates, so their national rate is shown. State shapes: us-atlas; China, Australia and Japan shapes: Highcharts Map Collection (CC BY-NC, non-commercial use). US states: crime is the FBI's 2024 Uniform Crime Reporting rate per 100,000 residents (violent crime and its parts; homicide from the same table), shown with the state's rank, its multiple of the US rate, and the yearly ratio of incidents to residents, not a personal risk score. Living wage is the MIT Living Wage Calculator (Glasmeier, state figures updated February 15, 2026): the before-tax income a household needs for food, child care, health care, housing, transport, other necessities and taxes, with no savings or eating out. It's compared with gross household income, either what your tier earns in that state or your income moved there at the same buying power; occupations use MIT's typical salaries per state. India (states and union territories): each state's ladder is India's scaled by its net state domestic product per capita (2024-25, MoSPI via PRS Legislative Research), at the national price level since India publishes no state price index. Output per person overstates household income in places like Goa, Sikkim and Delhi. Crime is NCRB "Crime in India 2023": murder (used for the homicide filter) plus violent crime, rape, kidnapping, robbery and all registered crime per 100k. These are registered cases, so states where reporting is easier (Kerala's total rate, for one) look worse than their real risk. The map shape predates Telangana, so Andhra Pradesh shows AP and Telangana combined by population; Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu and Lakshadweep have no published income figure. India shapes: Highcharts Map Collection. Small states too small for the 1:110m map (Singapore, Malta, Bahrain, the Caribbean and Pacific islands, etc.) are drawn as diamond markers and listed in the small-states box; Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore incomes are estimated from household surveys. Map: Natural Earth 1:110m via world-atlas, Equal Earth projection; colors show the rank the same buying power reaches in each country. US decades: prices are the BLS CPI-U annual average; each year's US ladder is today's moved to that year's real median household income (Census table H-8, CPI-U adjusted) and stretched by that year's household Gini, so a rank means the same share of households then as now. 1950 and 1960 use estimates from median family income; "now" is the latest Census year (2024). Starting from now uses the income chosen above as a US gross income; starting from an earlier year takes an income typed in that year's dollars. Better than US: eight measures of living standards, each from its primary source in its latest release (via Our World in Data): buying power (World Bank PIP median income per person, PPP), life expectancy (UN World Population Prospects 2024, year 2023), homicide (UNODC), clean government (Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index 2024), civil liberties (V-Dem 2025), health coverage (WHO universal health coverage service index 2023), schooling (World Bank harmonized test scores, 2020, the latest release) and clean air (population-weighted PM2.5, 2024). Each is turned so that higher is better (log scale for income, homicide and PM2.5), compared with the US in standard deviations across all countries, capped at ±2, and averaged with equal weight; a country needs at least 60% of the chosen measures to be ranked. Bands: best +0.40 and up, strong +0.30, good +0.20, fair +0.10, marginal above 0, beige at or below the US. Left out from the original livability sheet because they aren't comparable or current: national poverty lines and homelessness counts (each country defines them differently), unemployment (low in poor countries with large informal work), crowd-sourced Numbeo indices (cost of living, rent, crime, healthcare), the WEF road-quality survey (last run 2019), energy mix and nuclear share (not a living-standard outcome), tax rates and free college (policies rather than outcomes; taxes are already in the transfer tool), and GDP, growth and population (size, not living standards). About this project: it has been in the works since 2021 and 2024, and brings together several projects I've worked on over the last five years. One of them is the "Better than US Livability Index", a spreadsheet that compares every country with a GDP above $150B against the US across 19 colour-coded categories: growth, population, GDP, income tax, sales tax, VAT, import tax, property tax, corruption, human rights, personal and economic freedom, homelessness, poverty, unemployment, pollution deaths and more. Each category has a pass mark (for example income tax below 25%, VAT below 20%, a corruption score above 70, homelessness below 0.5%, poverty below 10%), and a country's tally of categories where it beats or trails the US decides its place. Data came from Transparency International, Our World in Data, the Cato Institute, the OECD, Trading Economics and Wikipedia; countries that fell outside the rules (Mexico, Iceland and Hong Kong, for example) were listed separately as excluded. Class Rank grew out of that comparison: the same idea of measuring places against each other, with buying power, class tiers, crime and living costs added on top. [build 2026-10-10c]