List of countries by GDP (nominal) per capita

Nominal gross domestic product (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 per capita is often used as a proxy indicator of a country's standard of living; however, this is inaccurate because GDP per capita is not a measure of personal income and does not take into account social and environmental costs and benefits. Measures of personal income include average wage, real income, median income, disposable income and gross national income (GNI) per capita.

Comparisons of GDP per capita are also frequently made on the basis of purchasing power parity (PPP), to adjust for differences in the cost of living in different countries. PPP largely removes the exchange rate problem but not others; it does not reflect the value of economic output in international trade, and it also requires more estimation than GDP per capita.[relevant to this section? – discuss] On the whole, PPP per capita figures are more narrowly spread than nominal GDP per capita figures.

GDP per capita does not consider differences in the cost of living in different countries, and the results may vary greatly from one year to another based on fluctuations in the exchange rates of the country's currency. Such fluctuations may change a country's ranking from one year to the next, while the standard of living of its population might not change by as much.

Several leading GDP-per-capita (nominal) jurisdictions may be considered tax havens, and their GDP data subject to material distortion by tax-planning activities. Examples include Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Ireland and Luxembourg.

Non-sovereign entities (the world, continents, and some dependent territories) and states with limited international recognition are included in the list in cases in which they appear in the sources. These economies are not ranked in the charts (except Kosovo and Taiwan), but are listed in sequence by GDP for comparison. Four UN members (Cuba, Monaco and North Korea) do not belong to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), hence their economies are not ranked. Kosovo, is not a member of the United Nations and is a member of the IMF. Taiwan is not an IMF member, but it is listed in the official IMF indices.

Distorted GDP-per-capita for tax havens

Many of the leading GDP-per-capita (nominal) jurisdictions are tax havens whose economic data is artificially inflated by tax-driven corporate accounting entries. For instance, the Irish GDP data above is subject to material distortion by the tax planning activities of foreign multinationals in Ireland. To address this, in 2017 the Central Bank of Ireland created "modified GNI" (or GNI*) as a more appropriate statistic, and the OECD and IMF have adopted it for Ireland. 2015 Irish GDP is 143% of 2015 Irish GNI*.

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.

— "Piercing the Veil", International Monetary Fund, June 2018

Table

All data are in current United States dollars. Historical data see list of countries by past and projected GDP (nominal) per capita.

The table initially ranks each country or territory by its IMF estimate, and can be reranked by any of the sources.

See also

• List of countries by external debt
• List of countries by GDP (nominal)
• List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita
• List of countries by GNI (nominal) per capita
• List of countries by past and projected GDP (nominal) per capita
• List of countries by wealth per adult

Notes

External links

• by Google, World Bank data
• by Lebanese-economy-forum, World Bank data