[graeme]

What's the top 10% in Bangkok and Bangladesh?

Having lived in one poor country (Cuba), I found your statement as incredible as the grandparent comment's author did.

Bottom 10% in America is $10,500 according to Wikipedia. That doesn't get you much standard of living.

Everything is cheaper in the developing world, so seemingly small amounts can go much further.

[rayiner]

Cuba is a middle-income country. It has a GDP per capita 3x as high as India, and 5x as high as Bangladesh.

[graeme]

Cuba is a weird case, due to the socialist economy.

Monthly salaries are about $15-$30. No, I'm not forgetting a zero.

They get free education and health care (though quality of the latter varies) and they get a few cheap food as rations.

There are a few other benefits, but in large part they're quite poor.

[rayiner]

Top 10% of Bengalis have 35% of the income, in a country with a purchasing-power parity (PPP) income per capita of $1909. So my guess would be top decile makes about $6-7k/year. This is in a country with zero public services (while someone living on $10k/year in the U.S. has access to public education,* public housing, food stamps, Medicaid, etc). India is substantially better, but at around double the PPP income of Bangladesh, that puts top 10% of Indians probably right around the bottom 10% of Americans.

*) American school spend on average $10k/year per student.