In 2025, Luxembourg was the country with the highest gross domestic product per capita in the world. Of the 20 listed countries, 13 are in Europe and five are in Asia, alongside the U.S. and Australia. There are no African or Latin American countries among the top 20. Correlation with high living standards While GDP is a useful indicator for measuring the size or strength of an economy, GDP per capita is much more reflective of living standards. For example, when compared to life expectancy or indices such as the Human Development Index or the World Happiness Report, there is a strong overlap - 14 of the 20 countries on this list are also ranked among the 20 happiest countries in 2024, and all 20 have "very high" HDIs. Misleading metrics? GDP per capita figures, however, can be misleading, and to paint a fuller picture of a country's living standards then one must look at multiple metrics. GDP per capita figures can be skewed by inequalities in wealth distribution, and in countries such as those in the Middle East, a relatively large share of the population lives in poverty while a smaller number live affluent lifestyles.

The average for 2024 based on 30 countries was 51662 U.S. dollars. The highest value was in Luxembourg: 128182 U.S. dollars and the lowest value was in Albania: 18920 U.S. dollars. The indicator is available from 1990 to 2024. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

Gross domestic product (GDP) per capita is a measure of economic production, which takes the entire output of a national economy during a year and divides it by the population of that country. In the European Union, Luxembourg, Ireland, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Austria come out on top as the countries which produced the most per capita in 2024. Europe's richest countries benefit from multinational companies Many criticisms have been made of using GDP per capita as away to judge a country's economic wealth in recent years, as global capital flows have come to distort the statistics and to give a warped impression of different countries' wealth. This is most notably the case for Ireland and for Luxembourg, which while certainly high-income countries, have experienced dramatic booms in their GDP over the past two decades due to the accounting practices of the large multinational corporations which have their European headquarters in these member states, such as Facebook and Apple in Dublin, and Amazon in Luxembourg. Will the poorest countries converge towards the EU average? At the bottom of the list, two of the most recent member states of the EU, Romania and Bulgaria, come last in terms of GDP per capita. Whether these countries will be able to capitalize on their relatively low-wages to spur economic growth and experience the convergence towards the older member states of the union shown by countries such as Estonia, Czechia, and Lithuania, remains a pressing issue for these poorer member states.

In 2022, Luxembourg had the largest gross domestic product (GDP) per capita at purchasing power parity. The country ranked first with a PPP-adjusted GDP per capita of about 141,000 international dollars. Ireland and Singapore followed in the places behind.

19 of the 20 countries with the lowest estimated GDP per capita in the world in 2024 are located in Sub-Saharan Africa. South Sudan is believed to have a GDP per capita of just 351.02 U.S. dollars - for reference, Luxembourg has the highest GDP per capita in the world, at almost 130,000 U.S. dollars, which is around 400 times larger than that of Burundi (U.S. GDP per capita is over 250 times higher than Burundi's). Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa Many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa have been among the most impoverished in the world for over a century, due to lacking nutritional and sanitation infrastructures, persistent conflict, and political instability. These issues are also being exacerbated by climate change, where African nations are some of the most vulnerable in the world, as well as the population boom that will place over the 21st century. Of course, the entire population of Sub-Saharan Africa does not live in poverty, and countries in the southern part of the continent, as well as oil-producing states around the Gulf of Guinea, do have some pockets of significant wealth (especially in urban areas). However, while GDP per capita may be higher in these countries, wealth distribution is often very skewed, and GDP per capita figures are not representative of average living standards across the population. Outside of Africa Yemen is the only country outside of Africa to feature on the list, due to decades of civil war and instability. Yemen lags very far behind some of its neighboring Arab states, some of whom rank among the richest in the world due to their much larger energy sectors. Additionally, the IMF does not make estimates for Afghanistan, which would also likely feature on this list.

The average for 2024 based on 42 countries was 50661 U.S. dollars. The highest value was in Luxembourg: 128182 U.S. dollars and the lowest value was in Ukraine: 16320 U.S. dollars. The indicator is available from 1990 to 2024. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

Worldwide, Luxembourg has the highest net national income per capita, reaching nearly ****** U.S. dollars in 2021. Norway and Switzerland followed behind. When adjusting for purchasing power parity (PPP), Bermuda has the highest average income or wealth per adult worldwide.

Engel's law is an economic theory first put forward by Ernst Engel in 1857, claiming that the higher a family's income is, the lower the share of that income is that goes into food. This theory definitely rings true when looking at European consumer buying behavior in the 20th century, with Switzerland as a prime example. In 1912, Swiss families spent approximately 61 percent of their income on food and clothing, which then fell to 47 percent in 1949. The continued rise of European capitalism and consumerism saw this figure fall to just 12 percent by the end of the millennium. At that point, Switzerland had developed into one of the wealthiest countries in the world, with the third-highest GDP per capita (behind Luxembourg and Japan, respectively).