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.

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 177 countries was 27291 U.S. dollars. The highest value was in Singapore: 132570 U.S. dollars and the lowest value was in Burundi: 836 U.S. dollars. The indicator is available from 1990 to 2024. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

GDP per Capita: Australian Capital Territory data was reported at 123,409.000 AUD in 2025. This records an increase from the previous number of 117,118.000 AUD for 2024. GDP per Capita: Australian Capital Territory data is updated yearly, averaging 61,274.000 AUD from Jun 1990 (Median) to 2025, with 36 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 123,409.000 AUD in 2025 and a record low of 27,429.000 AUD in 1990. GDP per Capita: Australian Capital Territory data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Australian Bureau of Statistics. The data is categorized under Global Database’s Australia – Table AU.A: SNA08: Gross Domestic Product and Gross Domestic Product per Capita: by State.

This dataset provides values for GDP PER CAPITA reported in several countries. The data includes current values, previous releases, historical highs and record lows, release frequency, reported unit and currency.

This dataset provides values for GDP PER CAPITA reported in several countries. The data includes current values, previous releases, historical highs and record lows, release frequency, reported unit and currency.

This dataset provides values for GDP PER CAPITA reported in several countries. The data includes current values, previous releases, historical highs and record lows, release frequency, reported unit and currency.

This dataset is about countries per year in Eastern Africa. It has 1,088 rows. It features 4 columns: country, capital city, and health expenditure per capita.

In 2018, Sweden had the highest amount of venture capital (VC) investments made per capita in Europe. Roughly speaking, around 140 U.S. dollars were invested in VC businesses per inhabitant in Sweden during that year. Also in that year, this figure for Italy amounted to 2 U.S. dollars.

The Gross Domestic Product per capita in the United States was last recorded at 66682.61 US dollars in 2024. The GDP per Capita in the United States is equivalent to 528 percent of the world's average. This dataset provides - United States GDP per capita - actual values, historical data, forecast, chart, statistics, economic calendar and news.

About this Dataset

This dataset contains 25 columns which are: 1. Country: Corresponding country. 2. Poverty headcount ratio at $2.15 a day (2017 PPP) (% of population): Poverty in country. 3. Life expectancy at birth, total (years): Expected life from birth. 4. Population, total: Population of Country. 5. Population growth (annual %): Population growth each year. 6. Net migration: is the difference between the number of immigrants and the number of emigrants divided by the population. 7. Human Capital Index (HCI) (scale 0-1): is an annual measurement prepared by the World Bank. HCI measures which countries are best in mobilizing their human capital, the economic and professional potential of their citizens. The index measures how much capital each country loses through lack of education and health. 8. GDP (current US$)current US$constant US$current LCUconstant LCU: Gross domestic product is a monetary measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced in a specific time period by a country or countries. 9. GDP per capita (current US$)current US$constant US$current LCUconstant LCU: the sum of gross value added by all resident producers in the economy plus any product taxes (less subsidies) not included in the valuation of output, divided by mid-year population. 10. GDP growth (annual %): The annual average rate of change of the gross domestic product (GDP) at market prices based on constant local currency, for a given national economy, during a specified period of time. 11. Unemployment, total (% of total labor force) (modeled ILO estimate) 12. Inflation, consumer prices (annual %) 13. Personal remittances, received (% of GDP) 14. CO2 emissions (metric tons per capita) 15. Forest area (% of land area) 16. Access to electricity (% of population) 17. Annual freshwater withdrawals, total (% of internal resources) 18. Electricity production from renewable sources, excluding hydroelectric (% of total) 19. People using safely managed sanitation services (% of population) 20. Intentional homicides (per 100,000 people) 21. Central government debt, total (% of GDP) 22. Statistical performance indicators (SPI): Overall score (scale 0-100) 23. Individuals using the Internet (% of population) 24. Proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments (%) 25. Foreign direct investment, net inflows (% of GDP): is when an investor becomes a significant or lasting investor in a business or corporation in a foreign country, which can be a boost to the global economy.

Category

Economic

Keywords

Row Count

217

Price

$5.50

This is a dataset I gathered for my analysis on standard of living indicators.

It includes data for most of the countries in the following topics:

GDP per Capita SPI - Social Progress Index HCI - Human Capital Index GINI Index HDI - Human Development Index HCI - Happy Planet Index

Data Source: socialprogress.com, World Bank, New Economic Foundation

The Gross Domestic Product per capita in Japan was last recorded at 37144.91 US dollars in 2024. The GDP per Capita in Japan is equivalent to 294 percent of the world's average. This dataset provides - Japan GDP per capita - actual values, historical data, forecast, chart, statistics, economic calendar and news.

This dataset is about countries in Africa. It has 54 rows. It features 3 columns: capital city, and health expenditure per capita.

This dataset contains estimates of the socioeconomic status (SES) position of each of 149 countries covering the period 1880-2010. Measures of SES, which are in decades, allow for a 130 year time-series analysis of the changing position of countries in the global status hierarchy. SES scores are the average of each country’s income and education ranking and are reported as percentile rankings ranging from 1-99. As such, they can be interpreted similarly to other percentile rankings, such has high school standardized test scores. If country A has an SES score of 55, for example, it indicates that 55 percent of the countries in this dataset have a lower average income and education ranking than country A. ISO alpha and numeric country codes are included to allow users to merge these data with other variables, such as those found in the World Bank’s World Development Indicators Database and the United Nations Common Database.

See here for a working example of how the data might be used to better understand how the world came to look the way it does, at least in terms of status position of countries.

VARIABLE DESCRIPTIONS:

unid: ISO numeric country code (used by the United Nations)

wbid: ISO alpha country code (used by the World Bank)

SES: Country socioeconomic status score (percentile) based on GDP per capita and educational attainment (n=174)

country: Short country name

year: Survey year

gdppc: GDP per capita: Single time-series (imputed)

yrseduc: Completed years of education in the adult (15+) population

region5: Five category regional coding schema

regionUN: United Nations regional coding schema

DATA SOURCES:

The dataset was compiled by Shawn Dorius (sdorius@iastate.edu) from a large number of data sources, listed below. GDP per Capita:

1. Maddison, Angus. 2004. 'The World Economy: Historical Statistics'. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development: Paris. GDP & GDP per capita data in (1990 Geary-Khamis dollars, PPPs of currencies and average prices of commodities). Maddison data collected from: http://www.ggdc.net/MADDISON/Historical_Statistics/horizontal-file_02-2010.xls.

2. World Development Indicators Database Years of Education 1. Morrisson and Murtin.2009. 'The Century of Education'. Journal of Human Capital(3)1:1-42. Data downloaded from http://www.fabricemurtin.com/ 2. Cohen, Daniel & Marcelo Cohen. 2007. 'Growth and human capital: Good data, good results' Journal of economic growth 12(1):51-76. Data downloaded from http://soto.iae-csic.org/Data.htm

3. Barro, Robert and Jong-Wha Lee, 2013, "A New Data Set of Educational Attainment in the World, 1950-2010." Journal of Development Economics, vol 104, pp.184-198. Data downloaded from http://www.barrolee.com/

4. Maddison, Angus. 2004. 'The World Economy: Historical Statistics'. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development: Paris. 13.

5. United Nations Population Division. 2009.

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.

During the first three quarters of 2019, global venture capital investments reached over *** billion U.S dollars with the United States accounting for more than half of all VC investments made worldwide. In terms of per capita spend, of all major VC investment markets it was Israel that came out on top with over *** U.S dollars per capita in venture capital investments per capita.

What are the consequences for per capita incomes, convergence rates, and capital accounts under conditions of free trade and borrowing frictions between rich and poor countries? In Andic (2024), I extend the standard neoclassical growth model by assuming free trade in intermediate goods and imperfect capital flows. Comparative advantage, based on productivities, sets the pattern of trade as the South specializing in less sophisticated intermediates and the North in more sophisticated ones. Southern countries are capital poor and borrowing constrained by assumption. In this setting, I first show that the South attains a lower per capita GDP in the long-run compared to the North. Yet, its rate of convergence is relatively higher. Second, I demonstrate that the constraint on borrowing is endogenous. Third, the South runs a current account deficit in the long-run with the North. Finally, I discuss trade can lead to gains in terms of per capita capital compared to autarky and improve the world average income. Quantitatively, my analysis reveals that long-run per capita income of the South is 15 percent of the North. The conditional convergence rate is around 9 percent in the South and 3 percent in the North. The borrowing limit is 24 percent leading to a current account deficit of 2.5 percent in the South and a surplus of 0.4 percent in the North. Both blocks have static gains from trade in the constrained open economy compared to an autarky, if not dynamically better off. The relative gain of the North is found to be higher. However, the world average income more than doubles when the borrowing constraint is eliminated. This work employs publicly available data from the IMF Balance of Payments and International Investment Position, World Bank World Development Indicators, World Bank International Debt Statistics and PWT10. It uses Stata15 and Python PyCharm to generate all the figures and tables, which can be replicated with the codes and data files provided below. Note that in the second version, Stata .do file named "fig1_2_3_15_16_table1_2_3" is updated. Now, it produces a different Figure 2 compared to the first version.

This horizontal bar chart displays health expenditure per capita (current US$) by capital city using the aggregation average, weighted by population in Korea. The data is about countries per year.

Out of all 50 states, New York had the highest per-capita real gross domestic product (GDP) in 2024, at 92,341 U.S. dollars, followed closely by Massachusetts. Mississippi had the lowest per-capita real GDP, at 41,603 U.S. dollars. While not a state, the District of Columbia had a per capita GDP of more than 210,780 U.S. dollars. What is real GDP? A country’s real GDP is a measure that shows the value of the goods and services produced by an economy and is adjusted for inflation. The real GDP of a country helps economists to see the health of a country’s economy and its standard of living. Downturns in GDP growth can indicate financial difficulties, such as the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009, when the U.S. GDP decreased by 2.5 percent. The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on U.S. GDP, shrinking the economy 2.8 percent. The U.S. economy rebounded in 2021, however, growing by nearly six percent. Why real GDP per capita matters Real GDP per capita takes the GDP of a country, state, or metropolitan area and divides it by the number of people in that area. Some argue that per-capita GDP is more important than the GDP of a country, as it is a good indicator of whether or not the country’s population is getting wealthier, thus increasing the standard of living in that area. The best measure of standard of living when comparing across countries is thought to be GDP per capita at purchasing power parity (PPP) which uses the prices of specific goods to compare the absolute purchasing power of a countries currency.