UK GDP per capita 2013

The latest CIA World Factbook estimate of UK GDP per capita per year, which is for 2013, says it is $37,300, which is just over £23,000.

economics: UK debt, deficit, GDP, etc, in 2012

I tried to get on to the nef and Quaker Peace & Social Witness (QPSW) ‘economic mythbusters’ online course in May/June but there wasn’t room. QPSW is now working with nef to make some resources available in due course: maybe course briefings and questions and edited clips of lectures. QPSW also recommended the Earth and Economy newsletter and Quakernomics blog.

So, in the meantime, the marvellous CIA World Factbook and False Economy continue to be my favourite sources of information on economics.

According to the latest (2012) data in the CIA World Factbook, the UK is the ninth largest economy in the world but 36th in GDP per capita.

GDP (purchasing power parity): £1.53 trillion; GDP per capita per year: £24,100. This has barely changed since 2010.  But there was a huge drop between 2008 (£28,330) and 2009 (£23,200) due to the banking crash.

Budget: revenues: £654bn less public spending £780bn = budget deficit £126bn. (This tallies with the other way that the budget deficit is expressed, ie as 7.7% of GDP.)

Public debt is 88.7% of GDP (2012 est.) which is £1.35 trillion.

Other key stats are

• GDP - composition by sector: agriculture 0.7%; industry 21.1%; services 78.2% (2012 est.)
• Unemployment rate: 7.8%
• Population below poverty line: 14% (2006 est.)
• Household income or consumption by percentage share: lowest 10%: 2.1%; highest 10%: 28.5% (1999). 

And finally a report from www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/18/george-osborne-imf-austerity:  The head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, said on Thursday 18 April that the poor performance of the British economy had left her with no alternative but to call on George Osborne to rethink his austerity strategy.

Why GDP per head is a flawed measure of economic well-being

One reason is that, being expressed as an average, it hides shocking disparities between the top and the bottom. So, for example, if you look up Gross World Product in the World Factbook at www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook, you find that in 2011 it was 79 trillion US dollars, which is orld population was just approaching seven billion, the average for every man, woman and child on the planet was $11,800 per person per year. 

Compare this to the widely quoted statistic that more than one billion people live on a dollar a day, which is mentioned for example in “Millennium Development Goal 1 – To eradicate extreme poverty” at http://www.oxfam.org.uk/education/resources/change_the_world_in_eight_steps/files/goal_1_updated.pdf

www.oxfam.org.uk/education/resources/change_the_world_in_eight_st

Similarly, the UK average hides shocking disparities between the top and the bottom. In 2011 GDP per person per year was average for every man, woman and child on the planet was $36,600 or £23,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. This would be £92,000 a year for a family of four.