A country's

gross domestic product Gross domestic product (GDP) is a monetary measure of the total market value of all the final goods and services produced and rendered in a specific time period by a country or countries. GDP is often used to measure the economic performanc ...

(GDP) at

purchasing power parity Purchasing power parity (PPP) is a measure of the price of specific goods in different countries and is used to compare the absolute purchasing power of the countries' currency, currencies. PPP is effectively the ratio of the price of a market bask ...

(PPP) per capita is the PPP value of all final

goods and services Goods are items that are usually (but not always) tangible, such as pens or Apple, apples. Services are activities provided by other people, such as teachers or barbers. Taken together, it is the Production (economics), production, distributio ...

produced within an

economy An economy is an area of the Production (economics), production, Distribution (economics), distribution and trade, as well as Consumption (economics), consumption of Goods (economics), goods and Service (economics), services. In general, it is ...

in a given year, divided by the average (or mid-year) population for the same year. This is similar to nominal GDP per capita but adjusted for the

cost of living The cost of living is the cost of maintaining a certain standard of living for an individual or a household. Changes in the cost of living over time can be measured in a cost-of-living index. Cost of living calculations are also used to compare t ...

in each country. In 2023, the estimated average GDP per capita (PPP) of all of the countries was Int$22,452. For rankings regarding wealth, see

list of countries by wealth per adult This is a list of countries of the world by wealth per adult, from UBS's ''Global Wealth Databook.'' See table 3-1 for all countries, on pages 123-126, for mean and median wealth, Gini coefficient, distribution of adults (%) by wealth range, ...

Method

The

(GDP)

per capita ''Per capita'' is a Latin phrase literally meaning "by heads" or "for each head", and idiomatically used to mean "per person". Social statistics The term is used in a wide variety of social science, social sciences and statistical research conte ...

figures on this page are derived from PPP calculations. Such calculations are prepared by various organizations, including the IMF and the

World Bank The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and Grant (money), grants to the governments of Least developed countries, low- and Developing country, middle-income countries for the purposes of economic development ...

. As estimates and assumptions have to be made, the results produced by different organizations for the same country are not hard facts and tend to differ, sometimes substantially, so they should be used with caution. Comparisons of national wealth are frequently made based on ''nominal'' GDP and savings (not just income), which do not reflect differences in the

in different countries (''see

List of countries by GDP (nominal) per capita This is a list of countries by nominal GDP per capita. GDP per capita is the total value of a country's finished goods and services (gross domestic product) divided by its total population (per capita). Gross domestic product (GDP) per capita is ...

''); hence, using a PPP basis is arguably more useful when comparing differences in

living standards Standard of living is the level of income, comforts and services available to an individual, community or society. A contributing factor to an individual's quality of life, standard of living is generally concerned with objective metrics outside ...

between economies because PPP takes into account the relative cost of living and the inflation rates of the countries, rather than using only exchange rates, which may distort the real differences in income. This is why GDP (PPP) per capita is often considered one of the indicators of a country's standard of living, although this can be problematic because GDP per capita is not a measure of

personal income In economics, personal income refers to the total earnings of an individual from various sources such as wages, investment ventures, and other sources of income. It encompasses all the products and money received by an individual. Personal inco ...

. (''See Standard of living and GDP''.) GDP (PPP) and GDP (PPP) per capita are usually measured by

international dollar The international dollar (int'l dollar or intl dollar, symbols Int'l$., Intl$., Int$), also known as Geary–Khamis dollar (symbols G–K$ or GK$), is a hypothetical unit of currency that has the same purchasing power parity that the U.S. doll ...

, which is a hypothetical

currency A currency is a standardization of money in any form, in use or circulation as a medium of exchange, for example banknotes and coins. A more general definition is that a currency is a ''system of money'' in common use within a specific envi ...

that has the same purchasing power in every economy as the U.S. dollar in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

Table

All figures are in current

s, and rounded to the nearest whole number. ''The table initially ranks each country or territory with their latest available year's estimates, and can be re-ranked by any of the sources.'' * ''Nearly all country links in the table connect to articles titled "Income in (''country'' or ''territory'')" or to "Economy of (''country'' or ''territory'')".''

Footnotes

Expanding the coverage of illegal economic activities in Euro area national accounts

The share of the shadow economy is significant in many European countries, ranging from less than 10 to over 40 per cent of GDP. Since 2014, EU member states have been encouraged by Eurostat, the official statistics body, to include some illegal activities.

Distorted GDP-per-capita for tax havens

There are many natural economic reasons for GDP-per-capita to vary between jurisdictions (e.g. places rich in oil and gas tend to have high GDP-per-capita figures). However, it is increasingly being recognized that tax havens, or corporate tax havens, have distorted economic data which produces artificially high, or inflated, GDP-per-capita figures. It is estimated that over 15% of global jurisdictions are tax havens (see tax haven lists). The paper implicitly adopts the "smaller" tax haven approach, i.e., disregarding larger countries that have either low taxes rates (for example,

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

), or systems of taxation which permit them to be used to structure tax avoidance schemes (for example, the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

). It also excludes non-sovereign tax havens (for example,

Delaware Delaware ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic and South Atlantic states, South Atlantic regions of the United States. It borders Maryland to its south and west, Pennsylvania to its north, New Jersey ...

or Labuan). An IMF investigation estimates that circa 40% of global foreign direct investment flows, which heavily influence the GDP of various jurisdictions, are described as "phantom" transactions. In 2017, Ireland's economic data became so distorted by U.S. multinational tax avoidance strategies (see leprechaun economics), also known as BEPS actions, that Ireland effectively abandoned GDP (and GNP) statistics as credible measures of its economy, and created a replacement statistic called modified gross national income (or GNI*). Ireland is one of the world's largest corporate tax havens. A list of the top 15 GDP-per-capita countries from 2016 to 2017, contains most of the major global tax havens (see GDP-per-capita tax haven proxy for more detail):

Notes

References

External links

IMF DataMapper
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gdp (Ppp) Per Capita GDP (PPP) per capita *GDP (PPP) per capita