What would a basic income cost in Zimbabwe?
Pick a country, who gets it and how much a month. Everything is calculated on this device; nothing is sent anywhere.
Total cost per year
590 billion Zimbabwean gold
about 18.6 billion US dollars
17 million people × 2,900 Zimbabwean gold a month × 12 months
Compared with
- GDP (nominal) (2025)36.2%
Zimbabwe in numbers
Zimbabwe has a population of 17 million (2025) and a GDP of 1.63 trillion Zimbabwean gold (about 51.2 billion US dollars) in 2025.
Paying everyone 2,900 Zimbabwean gold a month would cost 590 billion Zimbabwean gold a year (about 18.6 billion US dollars), or 36.2% of GDP. The World Bank has no recent central government expense or tax figures for Zimbabwe, so only GDP is compared.
Children only (under 18: 8.06 million) would cost 280 billion Zimbabwean gold a year (17.2% of GDP); adults only (18 and over: 8.89 million), 310 billion Zimbabwean gold (19.0%).
Default amount: 2,900 Zimbabwean gold a month is the World Bank's international poverty line of $3.00 a day, converted into Zimbabwean gold at the exchange rate implied by the World Bank's GDP in local currency and in US dollars (2025), because there is no recent PPP conversion factor, and rounded to two significant figures. It is a reference point, not a policy proposal; change it above.
How to read this
This is the gross cost: the total paid out. The real net cost depends on which taxes fund it, which benefits or tax breaks it replaces and whether the payment is taxed. The population, budget and GDP figures are not all from the same year (see the sources).
Sources for the figures
- Population
- World Bank: population, total (SP.POP.TOTL), and population by single year of age 0 to 17 (SP.POP.AG00.FE.IN … SP.POP.AG17.MA.IN), 2025
- SP.POP.AG00.FE.IN … SP.POP.AG17.MA.IN
- Default amount
- World Bank: international poverty line of $3.00 a day (2021 PPP), June 2025 update
- Retrieved from the World Bank API on November 9, 2026 (CC BY 4.0). Government figures are central government, as a share of GDP in their own year, applied to the latest GDP.