As of 2024, Mumbai had a gross domestic product of *** billion U.S. dollars, the highest among other major cities in India. It was followed by Delhi with a GDP of around *** billion U.S. dollars. India’s megacities also boast the highest GDP among other cities in the country. What drives the GDP of India’s megacities? Mumbai is the financial capital of the country, and its GDP growth is primarily fueled by the financial services sector, port-based trade, and the Hindi film industry or Bollywood. Delhi in addition to being the political hub hosts a significant services sector. The satellite cities of Noida and Gurugram amplify the city's economic status. The southern cities of Bengaluru and Chennai have emerged as IT and manufacturing hubs respectively. Hyderabad is a significant player in the pharma and IT industries. Lastly, the western city of Ahmedabad, in addition to its strategic location and ports, is powered by the textile, chemicals, and machinery sectors. Does GDP equal to quality of life? Cities propelling economic growth and generating a major share of GDP is a global phenomenon, as in the case of Tokyo, Shanghai, New York, and others. However, the GDP, which measures the market value of all final goods and services produced in a region, does not always translate to a rise in quality of life. Five of India’s megacities featured in the Global Livability Index, with low ranks among global peers. The Index was based on indicators such as healthcare, political stability, environment and culture, infrastructure, and others.

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.

The estimated per capita income across Sikkim was the highest among Indian states at around *** thousand Indian rupees in the financial year 2024. Meanwhile, it was the lowest in the northern state of Bihar at over ** thousand rupees. India’s youngest state, Telangana stood in the fifth place. The country's average per capita income that year was an estimated *** thousand rupees. What is per capita income? Per capita income is a measure of the average income earned per person in a given area in a certain period. It is calculated by dividing the area's total income by its total population. If absolute numbers are noted, India’s per capita income doubled from the financial year 2015 to 2023. Wealth inequality However, as per economists, the increase in the per capita income of a country does not always reflect an increase in the income of the entire population. Wealth distribution in India remains highly skewed. The average income hides the disbursal and inequality in a society. Especially in a society like India where the top one percent owned over ** percent of the total wealth in 2022.

In 2022, ****** was home to the highest number of millionaires, followed by India’s capital New Delhi, and the IT capital - Bengaluru. This comes as no surprise since all three cities have the largest share of high net worth households along with a booming economic outlook. Overall, India had around *** billionaires as of March 2023, and ranked third globally in terms of its ultra-net-worth individuals. A growing wealth gap Despite this, India also has a very high wealth inequality with millions of people living below the poverty line. In fact, according to the last census, the state of Maharashtra (with Mumbai as its capital city) had the highest number of slums across the country with over *** million households. Furthermore, according to a 2015 study on the geography of the super-rich, Bangalore was ranked first in terms of the inequality between its rich and poor, with the wealth of the city’s billionaires being ******* times that of the average per capita GDP in the city. Mumbai came second in this listing, while Delhi was ranked fifth. It's a rich man's world As of 2018, the richest ** percent of Indians owned **** percent of the country’s wealth. The Indian economy was also seen to be one of the fastest growing economies across the world. This indicates the level of unequal distribution of wealth in the country. This is a matter of grave concern and has several implications in terms of the country’s development and progress.

Seychelles had the largest Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita in Africa as of 2024. The value amounted to 21,630 U.S. dollars. Mauritius followed with around 12,330 U.S. dollars, whereas Gabon registered 8,840 U.S. dollars. GDP per capita is calculated by dividing a country’s GDP by its population, meaning that some of the largest economies are not ranked within the leading ten. Impact of COVID-19 on North Africa’s GDP When looking at the GDP growth rate in Africa in 2024, Libya had the largest estimated growth in Northern Africa, a value of 7.8 percent compared to the previous year. Niger and Senegal were at the top of the list with rates of 10.4 percent and 8.3 percent, respectively. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the impact on the economy was severe. The growth of the North African real GDP was estimated at minus 1.1 percent in 2020. However, estimations for 2022 looked much brighter, as it was set that the region would see a GDP growth of six percent, compared to four percent in 2021.
Contribution of Tourism Various countries in Africa are dependent on tourism, contributing to the economy. In 2023, travel and tourism were estimated to contribute 182.6 billion U.S. dollars, a clear increase from 96.5 in 2020 following COVID-19. As of 2024, South Africa, Mauritius, and Egypt led tourism in the continent according to the Travel & Tourism Development Index.

In 2023, almost half of India’s GDP was generated by the services sector, a slight and steady increase over the last 10 years. Among the leading services industries in the country are telecommunications, IT, and software. The IT factorThe IT industry is a vital part of India’s economy, and in the fiscal year of 2016/2017, it generated about 8 percent of India’s GDP alone – a slight decrease from previous years, when it made up about 10 percent of the country’s economy. Nevertheless, the IT industry is growing, as is evident by its quickly increasing revenue and employment figures. IT includes software development, consulting, software management, and online services, and business process management (BPM). Employee migrationAlthough employment figures in IT, and thus in the services sector, are on the rise, most of the Indian workforce is still employed in agriculture, however, the figures show a trend pointing towards a reversal of this distribution. For now, the majority of Indians still do not live in cities – where IT jobs are generated – but urbanization is on the rise as well.

In the financial year 2021, a majority of Indian households fell under the aspirers category, earning between ******* and ******* Indian rupees a year. On the other hand, about ***** percent of households that same year, accounted for the rich, earning over * million rupees annually. The middle class more than doubled that year compared to ** percent in financial year 2005. Middle-class income group and the COVID-19 pandemic During the COVID-19 pandemic specifically during the lockdown in March 2020, loss of incomes hit the entire household income spectrum. However, research showed the severest affected groups were the upper middle- and middle-class income brackets. In addition, unemployment rates were rampant nationwide that further lead to a dismally low GDP. Despite job recoveries over the last few months, improvement in incomes were insignificant. Economic inequality While India maybe one of the fastest growing economies in the world, it is also one of the most vulnerable and severely afflicted economies in terms of economic inequality. The vast discrepancy between the rich and poor has been prominent since the last ***** decades. The rich continue to grow richer at a faster pace while the impoverished struggle more than ever before to earn a minimum wage. The widening gaps in the economic structure affect women and children the most. This is a call for reinforcement in in the country’s social structure that emphasizes access to quality education and universal healthcare services.

In 2023, approximately a third of the total population in India lived in cities. The trend shows an increase of urbanization by more than 4 percent in the last decade, meaning people have moved away from rural areas to find work and make a living in the cities. Leaving the fieldOver the last decade, urbanization in India has increased by almost 4 percent, as more and more people leave the agricultural sector to find work in services. Agriculture plays a significant role in the Indian economy and it employs almost half of India’s workforce today, however, its contribution to India’s GDP has been decreasing while the services sector gained in importance. No rural exodus in sightWhile urbanization is increasing as more jobs in telecommunications and IT are created and the private sector gains in importance, India is not facing a shortage of agricultural workers or a mass exodus to the cities yet. India is a very densely populated country with vast areas of arable land – over 155 million hectares of land was cultivated land in India as of 2015, for example, and textiles, especially cotton, are still one of the major exports. So while a shift of the workforce focus is obviously taking place, India is not struggling to fulfill trade demands yet.

In 2023, London had a gross domestic product of over 569 billion British pounds, by far the most of any region of the United Kingdom. The region of South East England which surrounds London had the second-highest GDP in this year, at over 360 billion pounds. North West England, which includes the major cities of Manchester and Liverpool, had the third-largest GDP among UK regions, at almost 250 billion pounds. Levelling Up the UK London’s economic dominance of the UK can clearly be seen when compared to the other regions of the country. In terms of GDP per capita, the gap between London and the rest of the country is striking, standing at over 63,600 pounds per person in the UK capital, compared with just over 37,100 pounds in the rest of the country. To address the economic imbalance, successive UK governments have tried to implement "levelling-up policies", which aim to boost investment and productivity in neglected areas of the country. The success of these programs going forward may depend on their scale, as it will likely take high levels of investment to reverse economic neglect regions have faced in the recent past. Overall UK GDP The gross domestic product for the whole of the United Kingdom amounted to 2.56 trillion British pounds in 2024. During this year, GDP grew by 0.9 percent, following a growth rate of 0.4 percent in 2023. Due to the overall population of the UK growing faster than the economy, however, GDP per capita in the UK fell in both 2023 and 2024. Nevertheless, the UK remains one of the world’s biggest economies, with just five countries (the United States, China, Japan, Germany, and India) having larger economies. It is it likely that several other countries will overtake the UK economy in the coming years, with Indonesia, Brazil, Russia, and Mexico all expected to have larger economies than Britain by 2050.

In 2024, approximately 67 percent of the total population in China lived in cities. The urbanization rate has increased steadily in China over the last decades. Degree of urbanization in China Urbanization is generally defined as a process of people migrating from rural to urban areas, during which towns and cities are formed and increase in size. Even though urbanization is not exclusively a modern phenomenon, industrialization and modernization did accelerate its progress. As shown in the statistic at hand, the degree of urbanization of China, the world's second-largest economy, rose from 36 percent in 2000 to around 51 percent in 2011. That year, the urban population surpassed the number of rural residents for the first time in the country's history.The urbanization rate varies greatly in different parts of China. While urbanization is lesser advanced in western or central China, in most coastal regions in eastern China more than two-thirds of the population lives already in cities. Among the ten largest Chinese cities in 2021, six were located in coastal regions in East and South China. Urbanization in international comparison Brazil and Russia, two other BRIC countries, display a much higher degree of urbanization than China. On the other hand, in India, the country with the worlds’ largest population, a mere 36.3 percent of the population lived in urban regions as of 2023. Similar to other parts of the world, the progress of urbanization in China is closely linked to modernization. From 2000 to 2024, the contribution of agriculture to the gross domestic product in China shrank from 14.7 percent to 6.8 percent. Even more evident was the decrease of workforce in agriculture.

In a country with the third-largest road network in the world, the total number of vehicles in fiscal year 2022 stood at 354 million. Road travel seemed to be the preferred choice in India with around 60 percent of the population who used personal or shared vehicles for commute. Not only public commute, the industrial movement of goods through roads has also been on the rise with nearly 2.9 billion metric tons per kilometer of freight transported through roads in the financial year 2020. Demographics The youth in the capital city of Delhi prefer to use public transport, and it is known to be one of the best public transport networks in the country. In the southern cities of Hyderabad and Chennai, however, personal two-wheelers were vehicles of choice for the young generation. This affection towards the easily navigable two-wheelers was reflected in the sales volume, with an approximate 18 million two-wheelers sold in the country in financial year 2024. Road accidents With the increase of motor bike sales in India, there was also a rise in the risks involved with them. With over 32.9 thousand road accidents by two-wheelers in 2022, each year, about three to five percent of the GDP of the country was invested in road accidents. Despite the downside, the number of motorcycles was likely to increase to make travelling within a mercilessly congested and not easily accessible network of roads within the large cities. Moreover, with continued urbanization and a consumer sector that continues to burgeon, the development of the automotive industry was expected to see continued growth.