Per Capita

A Per Capita income determination refers to how much money—in average—an individual makes in one country. That is assuming that the gross national product is equally distributed among each and every citizen.

There are many factors that determine a per capita income. There are the more obvious things, like population, that determine the income. If obviously a country earns a high gross national product and the population is low, the per capita income would translate to higher amounts.

The World Bank lists the following ten countries as having the highest per capita income for 2008:

1.Luxembourg
2.Norway
3.Iceland
4.Ireland
5.Denmark
6.Switzerland
7.Sweden
8.Finland
9.Netherlands
10.United States

It is interesting to note that nine of the ten aforementioned countries are part of Europe, while of eight of these nine countries are members of the European Union (EU) except for Switzerland. Although considered as the world's prime mover, the United States only came tenth on 2008r's per capita calculation.

The poorest country assessed by income per capita is Zimbabwe, what with the extremely escalating inflation rates and bad reputation for corruption in the country. Economists suggest that Zimbabwe has hyperinflation, and this dramatically affects their income per capita, their annualized inflation rates are too dramatic that it put them as the country with the lowest income per capita.