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.

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, and can be reranked by either of the sources.

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.^[8] It is estimated that over 15% of global jurisdictions are tax havens (see tax haven lists).^[9] An IMF investigation estimates that circa 40% of global FDI flows, which heavily influence the GDP of various jurisdictions, are described as "phantom" transactions.^[10]

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^[10]

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.

— Brad Setser, Council on Foreign Relations, "Ireland exports its Leprechaun", 25 April 2018^[11]

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.

— Patrick Honohan, ex-Governor of the Central Bank of Ireland, 13 July 2016^[12]

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)[6][13]
Rank Country/Territory Type 1  Qatar Oil & Gas —  Macau Tax haven (Sink OFC) 2  Luxembourg Top 10 Tax haven (Sink OFC) 3  Singapore Top 10 Tax haven (Conduit OFC) 4  Brunei Oil & Gas 5  Ireland Top 10 Tax haven (Conduit OFC) 6  Norway Oil & Gas 7  Kuwait Oil & Gas 8  United Arab Emirates Oil & Gas 9   Switzerland Top 10 Tax Haven (Conduit OFC) —  Hong Kong Top 10 Tax Haven (Sink OFC) 10  San Marino Tax haven (Sink OFC) 11  United States 59,495 12  Saudi Arabia Oil & Gas 13  Netherlands Top 10 Tax Haven (Conduit OFC) 14  Iceland 52,150 15  Bahrain Oil & Gas	Rank Country/Territory Type 1  Qatar Oil & Gas 2  Luxembourg Top 10 Tax haven (Sink OFC) —  Macau Tax haven (Sink OFC) 3  Singapore Top 10 Tax haven (Conduit OFC) 4  Brunei Oil & Gas 5  United Arab Emirates Oil & Gas 6  Ireland Top 10 Tax haven (Conduit OFC) 7   Switzerland Top 10 Tax haven (Conduit OFC) 8  Norway Oil & Gas —  Hong Kong Top 10 Tax haven (Sink OFC) 9  United States 57,467 10  Saudi Arabia Oil & Gas 11  Iceland 51,399 12  Netherlands Top 10 Tax haven (Conduit OFC) 13  Austria 50,078 14  Denmark 49,496 15  Sweden 49,175