List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita
This article is a list of the countries of the world by gross domestic product (at purchasing power parity) per capita, i.e., the purchasing power parity (PPP) value of all final goods and services produced within a country in a given year, divided by the average (or mid-year) population for the same year.
_per_capita_in_2021.svg.png.webp)
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>$60,000
$50,000 – $60,000
$40,000 – $50,000
$30,000 – $40,000 |
$20,000 – $30,000
$10,000 – $20,000
$5,000 – $10,000
$2,500 – $5,000 |
$1,000 – $2,500
<$1,000
No data |
As of 2019, the estimated average GDP per capita (PPP) of all of the countries of the world is Int$18,381.[n 1] For rankings regarding wealth, see list of countries by wealth per adult.
Method
The gross domestic product (GDP) per capita figures on this page are derived from PPP calculations. Such calculations are prepared by various organizations, including the IMF and the World Bank. 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 on the basis of nominal GDP and savings (not just income), which do not reflect differences in the cost of living in different countries (see List of countries by GDP (nominal) per capita); hence, using a PPP basis is arguably more useful when comparing generalized differences in living standards between nations 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,[3][4] although this can be problematic because GDP per capita is not a measure of personal income. (See Standard of living and GDP.)
All figures are in current international dollars, and rounded up or down to the nearest whole number.
Table
The table is initially ranked by the average of the available estimates for each country or territory, and can be reranked by either of the sources.
* indicates "Income in COUNTRY or TERRITORY" or "Economy of COUNTRY or TERRITORY" links.
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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 percent of GDP.[8] Since 2014, EU member states have been encouraged by Eurostat, the official statistics body, to include some illegal activities.[9][10][11]
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 & Gas reserves 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.[12] It is estimated that over 15% of global jurisdictions are tax havens (see tax haven lists).[13] An IMF investigation estimates that circa 40% of global FDI flows, which heavily influence the GDP of various jurisdictions, are described as "phantom" transactions.[14]
A stunning $12 trillion—almost 40 percent of all foreign direct investment positions globally—is completely artificial: it consists of financial investment passing through empty corporate shells with no real activity. These investments in empty corporate shells almost always pass through well-known tax havens. The eight major pass-through economies—the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Hong Kong SAR, the British Virgin Islands, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Ireland, and Singapore—host more than 85 percent of the world’s investment in special purpose entities, which are often set up for tax reasons.
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.
Ireland has, more or less, stopped using GDP to measure its own economy. And on current trends [because Irish GDP is distorting EU-28 aggregate data], the eurozone taken as a whole may need to consider something similar.
The statistical distortions created by the impact on the Irish National Accounts of the global assets and activities of a handful of large multinational corporations have now become so large as to make a mockery of conventional uses of Irish GDP.
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):
| International Monetary Fund (2017) | World Bank (2016)[17][18] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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See also
Notes
References
- "World Economic Outlook Database, 2019". IMF.org. International Monetary Fund. Retrieved 24 February 2020.
- ""Overall total population" – World Population Prospects: The 2019 Revision" (xslx). population.un.org (custom data acquired via website). United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. Retrieved 24 February 2020.
- "Sarkozy attacks focus on economic growth (French president urges more emphasis on quality of life)", The Guardian, 14-09-2009.
- "Alternative progress indicators to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a means towards sustainable development"
- "World Economic Outlook - GDP per capita". International Monetary Fund. April 2021. Retrieved 7 April 2021.
- "GDP per capita, PPP (current international $) | Data". data.worldbank.org. Retrieved 2 July 2021.
- Real GDP per capita, The World Factbook, Central Intelligence Agency. Accessed on 12 May 2021.
- "Explaining the Shadow Economy in Europe: Size, Causes and Policy Options". International Monetary Fund. November 2019.
- "Sizing Up Black Markets and Red-Light Districts for G.D.P." The New York Times. 9 July 2014.
- "GDP to include illegal activity". Financier Worldwide Magazine. August 2014.
- "Handbook on the compilation of statistics on illegal economic activities in national accounts and balance of payments". Eurostat. 6 March 2018.
- "How tax havens turn economic statistics into nonsense". Quartz. 11 June 2018.
- Dharmapala, Dhammika; Hines, James R., Jr. (2009). "Which Countries Become Tax Havens?" (PDF). Journal of Public Economics. 93 (9–10): 1058–1068. doi:10.1016/j.jpubeco.2009.07.005. S2CID 16653726. The paper implicitly adopts the "smaller" tax haven approach, i.e., disregarding larger countries which have either low taxes rates (for example, Russia), or systems of taxation which permit them to be used to structure tax avoidance schemes (for example, the United Kingdom). It also excludes non-sovereign tax havens (for example, Delaware or Labuan).
- "Piercing the Veil, FINANCE & DEVELOPMENT, JUNE 2018, VOL. 55, NO. 2". IMF Finance & Development. June 2018.
- "Ireland Exports its Leprechaun". Council on Foreign Relations. 11 May 2018.
- "The Irish National Accounts: Towards some do's and don'ts". irisheconomy.ie. 13 July 2016.
- "PPP (current international $)". data.worldbank.org. World Bank. Retrieved 7 July 2020.
- "World Bank, International Comparison Program database". Retrieved 10 April 2018.
Economic classification of countries | |||||
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| Three-World Model | |||||
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| Other national accounts | |||||
| Human development | |||||
| Digital divide | |||||
| Net international investment position (NIIP) | |||||
 Economics portal •  World portal | |||||