The richest and poorest countries per person
Monaco's GDP per person is more than a thousand times Burundi's, and two of the top five are inflated by accounting rather than income.
GDP per capita divides a country's economic output by its population. It is the most-used single measure of national income, and it produces the widest gap in the game outside of population itself: Monaco sits around $234,000 per person, Burundi around $200.
That is a ratio of more than a thousand to one. It is also a reminder that an average says nothing about distribution — two countries with identical figures can feel entirely different to live in.
The full top eight
GDP per capita in US dollars, as used in the game:
- Monaco — $234,000
- Liechtenstein — 84,000
- Luxembourg — 25,006
- Ireland — 03,887
- Switzerland — $99,995
- Norway — $87,945
- Singapore — $84,500
- United States — $81,633
Two of these are accounting artefacts
Ireland's figure is the most misleading number in the category. Several of the world's largest companies book European profits through Irish subsidiaries, and that output lands in Ireland's GDP without landing in Irish wages. Irish economists rely on a modified measure precisely because the headline one overstates the country so badly.
Luxembourg's is inflated differently. Close to half the people working in Luxembourg commute in daily from Belgium, France and Germany. Their output counts in the numerator; they do not count in the denominator. Both countries are genuinely wealthy — but not as far ahead of their neighbours as these numbers imply.
The microstates at the top
Monaco and Liechtenstein head the list on real income, concentrated in banking, and on populations small enough that a handful of very wealthy residents moves the average. Monaco has around 38,000 people in two square kilometres.
Norway is the most straightforward entry in the top eight: oil and gas revenue, a sovereign wealth fund that is among the largest pools of invested capital on Earth, and a small population to divide it among. Singapore earns its place through trade, finance and manufacturing rather than resources.
The bottom of the table
Burundi sits at roughly $200 per person per year. Above it are South Sudan, Malawi, the Central African Republic and Sierra Leone, all under about $530.
The pattern is consistent: landlocked, recently at war, or both. Burundi, Malawi, the Central African Republic and South Sudan have all faced sustained conflict, and all but Sierra Leone have no coast. Resource wealth is no guarantee either — Equatorial Guinea's oil boom once gave it the highest GDP per capita in Africa alongside one of the widest inequality gaps in the world.
How to guess well
Three groups sit at the top: European microstates, oil states with small populations, and advanced economies in Western Europe, North America and East Asia. Three groups sit at the bottom: sub-Saharan Africa, post-conflict states, and a few isolated economies elsewhere.
The middle is where the game gets interesting. Eastern Europe has converged upwards faster than most people realise — Poland, Czechia and Estonia now sit far higher than their reputations. Latin America is lower than most people guess. And oil changes everything: Qatar and the UAE sit above most of Western Europe, while their non-oil neighbours do not.
The figures here come from the World Bank's current-dollar series, the same source the game uses.