Where do we sit in the world?
Posted: December 14, 2011
These demonstrate that the ‘sun burnt country’ is a pretty good place to live. All figures are for 2011 and amounts are in US$.
Population
There are over 22m people in Australia and our population is growing by over 200,000 a year. We are the 54th most populous country but dwarfed by China (1.4b), India (1b), USA (320m), Indonesia (235m), Brazil (197m), Pakistan (188m), Bangladesh (166m), Nigeria (162m), Russia (140m), Japan (125m) and Mexico (112m). Whilst most of these countries continue to grow, the demographics in Russia and Japan means their populations are falling.Amongst the middle sized countries are Vietnam (90m), Egypt and Ethiopia (86m), Germany (81m), Iran and Turkey (75m), Congo (70m), Thailand (68m), France (63m), UK (62m), Italy (60m), South Africa (50m), Korea (49m) and Spain (45m). Ageing in Italy and Germany has resulted in their populations falling.
Many of the other countries we hear about on the news are small compared to Australia. In Europe the populations of Netherlands is 17m, Belgium and Greece (11m), Sweden (9m), Switzerland (7m), Denmark, Finland, Ireland and Norway (around 5m). All have stable or slowly growing populations.
The countries that were affected by the Arab Spring uprisings are much smaller than Australia with Tunisia (10m), Libya and Jordan (6m), Liberia (4m), Kuwait (3m) and Bahrain and Qatar around 1m.
Output
Population is one measure of size but the amount we produce is another. Australia produces about 2% of global output. USA dominates with over 22% of world GDP followed by China (9%), Japan (8%), Germany (5%), France and Brazil (4%).Comparable countries to Australia are Italy, Canada, India and Spain. Some much smaller contributors to world output are Luxembourg (0.09%), Qatar (0.25%), United Arab Emirates and Denmark (0.48%), Norway (0.69%) and Switzerland (0.84%).
Output per person
But size isn’t everything. Another statistic called ‘GDP per capita’ is often used as an indicator of a country’s standard of living. In this measure Australia ranks 6th with $64,351. Luxembourg with a population of just 0.5m is on top with ($120,060) followed by Qatar ($109,881), Norway ($98.811), Switzerland ($75,836) and United Arab Emirates ($69,872).By this measure our standard of living is better than Denmark, Sweden, Canada, Netherlands, USA, Japan, France and Germany. As would be expected in developing countries GDP per capita is lowest in India ($1,382), China ($4,833) and Brazil ($12,423).
Wealth
Many developed countries have social security systems that guarantee a pension for their citizens so wealth accumulated in those places is generally lower than in Australia. This is because we have a high level of home ownership and encouragement to support ourselves in retirement through superannuation.The Credit Suisse statistics look at median wealth per adult because that gives a better indication of wealth distribution – half the adults will have higher wealth than this number and half will have lower wealth.
On this measure Australia comes out number one with $221,704 per adult. Next in this ranking are Luxembourg ($164,720) and Italy ($155,953). USA is lowest of the big economies on $52,752 with Germany ($57,283), Canada ($89,014) and France ($90,271) above it.
Wealth inequality
No country can distribute wealth equally amongst all its citizens. Some countries do a better job than others. In Australia for instance there are opportunities for education, careers and reliable income over time. We have safe saving systems and with a growing economy wealth will increase over the long term.Economists use a statistical measure called a ‘gini coefficient’ to measure wealth inequality. A figure of zero means total equality and 100 means total inequality. Most developed nations score between 60 and 80.
Australia scored 62.6 with only Japan (60.1) and Italy (61.3) having a ‘more equal’ wealth distribution. USA scored 82.4, Switzerland 80.4 and France and Germany 75. This means in all these countries there are more very wealthy people and a lot of poorer people.
The countries with the greatest inequality are Belize in Central America (96.6), Russia (91.6), Ukraine (88.9), Kazakhstan (86.3), Lebanon (85.8) and Zimbabwe (84.1).