Developed Country - Average Disposable Wage of OECD Members

Average Disposable Wage of OECD Members

While GDP per capita is often used to measure how developed a country is, it includes components that do not directly contribute to a citizen's well-being. However, breaking down GDP to its components and measuring only wages and salaries gives a more accurate picture of the living standard of a country. Unlike the gross wage, which can be an inaccurate indicator of the well-being of a citizen since it does not represent the full amount of money the worker will be left to consume on goods or services, the disposable wage excludes compulsory deductions such as income tax, municipal tax, provincial/state income tax, social security (pension plan, medicare) and compulsory insurance. The list below has compulsory deductions applied with rates obtained from the OECD Tax Database, which includes figures for all personal compulsory payments assuming that the citizen is single with no children, with an income level 100% of the average wage. The gross employment income are shown for reference and all monetary values are based on the OECD's purchasing power parity exchange rates. Note that the OECD does not publish data for some countries and hence they are not listed.