Top Ten 'Pop' Stats

China & India Grow Like Crazy

© Daniel Workman

China and India map, www.asianinfo.org

Our numbers on the most heavily-populated countries in the world may surprise you.

China and India are home to some 37% of the world's total population of about 6.5 billion. Together these two behemoths have 35% more people than the eight next most populated countries combined.

*a group of countries

Gross domestic product (GDP) per capita is the dollar value of a country's final output of goods and services in a year, divided by its population.

GDP per capital reflects the average income of a country's citizens. An important assumption of this statistic is that GDP is divided equally. Of course, in the real world this income is heavily weighted towards the upper and middle classes.

Knowing a country's GDP per capita is a good first step toward understanding the country's economic strengths and needs, as well as the general standard of living enjoyed by the average citizen.

Our list below shows GDP per capita for each of the ten most heavily populated countries. The number in brackets shows the rank of that country's GDP per capital as compared to other countries.

And The Winners Are...

China and India can significantly increase their respective GDPs with even modest incremental improvements in GDP per capita. Given the high population densities in these countries, even a 1% improvement per capita will be multiplied by 1.3 billion and 1.1 billion respectively.

We can also see why Nigerian rebels might be upset that despite their country's wealth in oil (as discussed in our article Top Ten Oil Countries) Nigeria's high population remains poor and with few jobs - even in the oil industry.

Some Population Facts To Ponder

Sources: The World Factbook; The World Bank Group


The copyright of the article Top Ten 'Pop' Stats in International Trade is owned by Daniel Workman. Permission to republish Top Ten 'Pop' Stats must be granted by the author in writing.



Comments
Jun 7, 2006 8:00 PM
derrick workman :
Some interesting thoughts to ponder. Shocking facts about the low income levels in many countries. Question is, how do you raise it?
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