Expat Community > Colombia

smkiat
Joined 2023
Posts: 236

Income Data for Colombia

1 year ago

Some comments here about income levels in Colombia made me curious. I found a site with 2021 income levels for individual, not household, income for 16 countries plus the WW average, one of the 16 countries included is Colombia along with the US and Canada among others including Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Great Britain & Russia.

Here is the URL for the graph for those who are interested:
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/charting-income-distributions-worldwide/

Since all charted values are in USD I looked up 2021 USD to COP rates at this URL:
https://www.exchange-rates.org/exchange-rate-history/usd-cop-2021
Which quickly provided the following:
Highest: 4,052.01 COP on December 31, 2021
Average: 3,745.94 COP over this period
Lowest: 3,411.07 COP on January 7, 2021

It appears the median income in Colombia in 2021 was about USD$6500 per year per person or using the average exchange rate of COP$3745.94 to the USD would equal COP$24,348,610 annually or about COP$2,029,050 per month. Keep in mind the 50th percentile means half the population is over this amount and half is under.

So for expats with income of USD$1500 per month which equals USD$18,000 per year or, using the 2021 average exchange rate, about COP$5,618,910 per month which just exceeds the 80th percentile meaning 8 out of 10 Colombians make less than that.

Income of USD$2500 per month equals USD$30,000 per year and the same 2021 average exchange rate would equal about COP$9,364,850 per month which exceeds the 90th percentile income level meaning 9 out of 10 Colombians make less than that.

Using the forgoing information I would guess this makes most North American & European pensioners financially enviable by the standards of a large majority of the Colombian population.

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