What makes a world leader’s pay reasonable or outlandish? One way of making this call is by looking at pay compared to a country’s GDP per person at purchasing power parity . Using PPP helps make a better estimate of just how far money goes in a country, since the cost of living will vary from country to country. Comparing each leader’s salary (in international dollars) to the IMF’s 2010 PPP figures shows how much more a world leader makes compared to an average joe at home.
1. Raila Odinga (Kenya): 255.30
2. Lee Hsien Loong (Singapore): 38.51
3. Donald Tsang (Hong Kong): 11.17
4. Nicolas Sarkozy (France): 8.92
5. Barack Obama (United States): 8.54
6. Yoshihiko Noda (Japan): 8.08
7. Angela Merkel (Germany): 7.86
8. Stephen Harper (Canada): 7.57
9. Mary McAleese (Ireland): 7.29
10. Julia Gillard (Australia): 7.21
What do these numbers mean? Looking at GDP per person doesn’t show how a country stacks up in terms of income inequality, a statistic that can measured using the Gini coefficient. Ranking the leaders by their country’s income inequality can really show how far out of touch a leader is with those governed. The Gini coefficient changes things up (zero means perfect equality and one perfect inequality)