What is GDP Per Capita?
GDP per capita is a country's gross domestic product (GDP) per person. Essentially, this measures the amount of goods and sales a country produced per person, on average.
How to Calculate GDP Per Capita
The formula for GDP per capita is:
GDP per capita =Gross Domestic Product / Population
For example, the US GDP per Capita is around $20 trillion in gross domestic product (2018) for a population of more than 300 million people. Using these numbers, that would mean the US GDP per capita is:
GDP per capita = $20,000,000,000,000 / 300,000,000 = $66,667
In other words, the average person from the US produced around $66,667 in goods and services during the year.
How is GDP Per Capita by Country Analyzed?
Gross domestic product is a macroeconomic measure of output. This measure helps analysts and investors get a better feel for whether a country is more or less productive and in turn whether it is headed for a recession or a bull market.
The per capita measure of GDP indicates whether the country's workforce is generally becoming more or less productive -- that is, whether the country's workforce is efficiently producing goods and services that consumers want.
