# Methodology This document records, for every figure on the site, what was included, what was excluded, where averages mask distribution, and which numbers we judged *not* honest enough to publish. ## Divisor We use **8.2 billion** — the UN World Population Prospects 2024 mid-year estimate. Source: [WPP 2024 Summary of Results (PDF)](https://population.un.org/wpp/assets/Files/WPP2024_Summary-of-Results.pdf). This is rounded to the nearest 100 million. Mid-2024 estimate is 8.16B; mid-2025 projection is ~8.23B. We chose 8.2B as the working divisor and note the rounding introduces <1% error in any per-capita figure. ## Per-essential notes ### Food - **Numerator:** `3,006 kcal / person / day` — the global average dietary energy supply, per the [FAO Food Balance Sheets 2010–2023](https://www.fao.org/statistics/highlights-archive/highlights-detail/food-balance-sheets-2010-2023/en) (FAOSTAT release of 28 October 2025). In 2023 the world crossed the historic milestone of 3,000 kcal/person/day for the first time (exact world value: 3,005.6, retrievable from [FAOSTAT](https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/FBS) and mirrored by [Our World in Data](https://ourworldindata.org/food-supply)). This number is the dietary energy available *for human consumption* after accounting for animal feed, seed, industrial use, and post-harvest loss. - **Denominator (need):** `2,100 kcal / person / day` — the conventional FAO/WHO/UNU reference for an average adult ([Human Energy Requirements, 2001](https://www.fao.org/4/y5686e/y5686e00.htm)). Actual requirements vary by age, sex, body mass, and activity. We use it because it is the most commonly cited reference floor in food-security literature. - **What this ratio misses:** calories aren't nutrition. A population can be calorically adequate and micronutrient-deficient. The site does not address protein, vitamin, or mineral sufficiency. ### Water - **Numerator:** `43,000 km³ / year` of renewable freshwater, per FAO AQUASTAT. - **Denominator (need):** `50 L / person / day` — the WHO "intermediate access" level for drinking, cooking, and basic hygiene ([WHO 2003 guideline](https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/WHO-SDE-WSH-03.02)). Survival minimum is 7.5 L/day; full health protection is ~100 L/day. - **What this ratio misses:** the biggest limitation on this page. Renewable freshwater is geographically locked. The Amazon basin discharges more water than the Sahara, Sahel, and Arabian Peninsula combined. Per-capita global averages tell you the global total is abundant; they do not tell you the water is where the people are. Transport, desalination, and storage are real costs that the ratio ignores. The "287×" figure is honest about aggregate supply and dishonest if read as "local supply." ### Electricity - **Numerator:** `32,202 TWh / year` — reported 2025 global generation, per the [Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy 2026](https://www.energyinst.org/statistical-review), up 857 TWh (3%) on 2024. This replaces the prior derived estimate (IEA 2023 generation plus a reported growth increment) with a single published total. Ember's [Global Electricity Review 2026](https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/global-electricity-review-2026/) independently reports 2025 demand growth of 849 TWh and renewables at a record 33.8% of generation, overtaking coal for the first time in over a century. - **Denominator (need):** two thresholds, because the IEA's "Tier 1" definition (100 kWh/person/year) is widely considered too low to enable economic development. The Modern Energy Minimum (1,000 kWh/person/year) includes productive uses such as small machines, refrigeration, and commercial lighting. - **What this ratio misses:** electricity is not all energy. The world used ~635 EJ of primary energy in 2024; only a fraction reaches end users as electricity. The site focuses on electricity because the access framework exists there and because electrification of heat and transport is the forward trajectory. Aggregate generation already clears the Modern Energy Minimum 3.9× over, yet [Tracking SDG 7 2026](https://www.irena.org/Publications/2026/Jun/Tracking-SDG-7-The-Energy-Progress-Report-2026) still counts **655 million people without electricity** in 2024 — a connection problem, not a generation problem. ### Output (GDP) - **Nominal output:** `$118.18 trillion` — the 2025 world aggregate in the IMF World Economic Outlook, April 2026 vintage ($118,175.485 billion; 2024 was $111,598.554B). Nominal, current prices. PPP-adjusted world GDP runs considerably higher. Dividing by the site's 8.2B population gives nominal output per person; it does not measure household income or purchasing power. - **Separate poverty threshold:** `3.00 international dollars / person / day (2021 PPP)` — the World Bank's updated International Poverty Line ([June 2025 update](https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/factsheet/2025/06/05/june-2025-update-to-global-poverty-lines)), which replaced the prior $2.15/day (2017 PPP) line. - **No ratio:** current US dollars and 2021 PPP international dollars are different units. The former GDP-to-poverty ratio was invalid and was removed on 2026-09-05. An adjustment for units would still not turn GDP into household income or establish how much it costs to eliminate poverty. - **Calculator boundary:** cash-transfer scenarios use explicitly hypothetical current-US-dollar amounts. They do not price the World Bank poverty threshold, estimate poverty exits, or account for local purchasing power and delivery costs. ### Housing - **Numerator missing on purpose.** There is no clean global number for "housing units built per year." We considered using rooms-per-person from UN Demographic Yearbooks and rejected it as too noisy. - **Distribution evidence (instead):** 318M homeless and 2.8B in inadequate housing globally, per UN-Habitat and UN DESA. In wealthy countries, vacant units consistently exceed homeless counts by an order of magnitude or more. Sources cited inline on the page. ## UBI math, fully shown Universal $3/day floor for every human alive: ``` $3.00 × 8,200,000,000 people × 365 days = $8,979,000,000,000 ≈ $8.98 trillion / year ≈ 7.6% of world GDP ($118.18T) ``` Closing the **poverty gap** (paying only the difference between current income and $3/day, for the 847M people below the line) costs much less, because most poor people are not at zero income. The World Bank's poverty-gap statistic indicates the average shortfall is roughly $1/day per affected person, putting the closure cost well under $1 trillion / year — comparable to a single year's *increase* in global military spending. We did not put the gap number on the page because we could not find a single 2024-vintage published gap figure we trust enough. If we find one, we will add it with citation. ## What is deliberately left out - **"What if we abolished money."** This is a political and philosophical question, not an arithmetic one. The page restricts itself to arithmetic. - **GDP critiques.** GDP is a flawed measure — it counts oil spills and divorce lawyers as growth. But it is the measure the IMF publishes. Using it does not endorse it. - **Wealth confiscation.** The site notes that $250.6T is held by 58M adults to make a factual point about distribution. It does not claim that wealth should be — or could be — directly redistributed, which is a separate question with separate technical answers. The $250.6T figure is the published >$1M band of UBS's 56-market sample (GWR 2026), covering an estimated 92%+ of world personal wealth — not a full-world extrapolation. - **National-level data.** Per-country breakdowns are important but out of scope for v1. They exist in every cited source if you want to drill in. ## Errors and updates If a number on the site disagrees with this document, or either disagrees with its cited source, **the source wins**. Open an issue or PR on the GitHub repo and the page will be corrected.