How accurately does anyone know the global distribution of income?

Abstract

Measuring the global distribution of income is exceedingly challenging due to various issues such as inaccurate or sampled survey data, different ways of adjusting for purchasing power, inconsistent treatment of household size, differing use of dollar units, and different treatments of tax-related effects. Despite these challenges, the bottom lines hold that the richest people in the world earn multiples more than the poor, people with professional salaries in countries like the US are often in the top global earnings, and many people live in severe absolute poverty, with incomes as low as one hundredth of the income of the upper-middle class in the US. – AI-generated abstract.