Income and wealth percentile in Singapore
a year per adult, before tax; half of adults in Singapore earn less
The wealth ladder in Singapore
The middle adult in Singapore holds S$152,298 in net worth. The top 10% of holders begins at S$1,255,165 and the top 1% at S$7,205,641, which is 47 times the middle.
In Singapore the middle adult earns S$90,591 a year before tax and holds S$152,298 in net worth. The top 10% of earners begins at S$297,508, and the top 1% of wealth at S$7,205,641. Figures are per adult, in SGD.
Built for Singapore
Calculators and reference pages that answer for Singapore specifically.
Every published line
Income and net worth per adult in Singapore, in SGD.
| The line | Income | Net worth |
|---|---|---|
| Median | S$90,591 | S$152,298 |
| Average | S$160,251 | S$694,238 |
| Top 10% | S$297,508 | S$1,255,165 |
| Top 1% | S$919,400 | S$7,205,641 |
| Top 0.1% | S$2,832,188 | S$37,321,433 |
| Top 0.01% | S$9,500,000 | S$150,000,000 |
What the numbers say about Singapore
Singapore concentrates more wealth and income per square kilometre than any major economy on earth. Median income per adult is around S$90,600, with an average of S$160,000. The gap between the two already reveals how much top-end concentration the city holds. A small population, almost no natural resources, and a deliberate policy choice fifty years ago to become a regional services hub built that position. Today, finance and shipping anchor the formal economy.
Wealth statistics need a careful reading because of who is counted. Roughly 30 percent of the resident population is foreign-born, including a large share of high-net-worth individuals who have moved their primary residence here in the past decade. Median household net worth per adult is around S$152,000, but the average runs above S$694,000, with the top 1% threshold above S$7.2 million. Family offices have multiplied since 2020. Hong Kong's political shift, China's wealth diversification, and Singapore's regulatory clarity have all pulled assets toward the city-state.
Income distribution within Singapore reflects the dual structure of the labour market. The top end concentrates in finance, technology, shipping, legal services, and senior public-sector roles. Foreign-talent visas allow the city to import skilled workers without the cost-of-living drag becoming politically intractable, though that has changed somewhat since 2022. The bottom end is mostly held by foreign work-permit holders in construction, marine, and domestic services, who are not full residents and whose wages are not fully captured in distribution statistics. The Singaporean citizen median is therefore higher than the headline figure, since the bottom of the curve is filled by transient foreign labour. Cross-country comparisons miss this nuance and tend to flatter the city.
Housing complicates the wealth picture. Roughly 80 percent of Singaporean citizens live in HDB public housing, which is sold leasehold and excluded from many private-wealth metrics. The other 20 percent hold private property, which has appreciated sharply for two decades. Cooling measures, including higher stamp duties for foreign buyers introduced in 2023, have slowed the top end of the market without touching the HDB layer. The result is a wealth distribution where most citizens hold meaningful state-supported housing assets, while a smaller private-property class dominates the upper deciles.
Two themes shape the next decade. Singapore is now Asia's pre-eminent wealth-management centre, and the regulatory and political conditions that created that role show no sign of changing. And the city-state remains very small, which limits how much further the high-end labour market can grow without immigration becoming a more contested issue than it already is. Both forces will keep concentrating the top of the curve.
Common questions
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Where do these figures come from?
Nearby by median income
Every free tool
Method and sources
- World Inequality DatabasePretax national income per adult and net household wealth per adult.
- World Bank Informal Economy DatabaseInformal output as a share of GDP, the input to the level correction.
How the lines are worked out
The national distribution is fitted as a log-normal body with a Pareto top tail and read at each published point, per adult. Where a country’s own records measure less activity than its output implies, the level of the distribution is lifted toward the implied figure and the spread is left as published: that correction is set out in full on how we measure.
How a percentile is read off it
A percentile is the share of adults at or below a figure. The percentile methodology page states the fit, the anchors and the vintage.
What these figures do not cover
- Per adult, not per household. Couples are counted separately, so household figures run higher.
- Income is gross, before income tax and employee contributions.
- Local currency at the reference rate carried with the record, S$1 = $0.75.
- A national figure says nothing about a region or an occupation inside it.
Last updated July 2026.
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