Can someone please explain the difference between the GDP of a country and the GDP per capita of a country?

Question

Can someone please explain the difference between the GDP of a country and the GDP per capita of a country?

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Answer 1

Imagine China having a GDP of 17 trillion USD. That’s a lot.

Now imagine Luxemburg having a GDP of 85 billion USD. That’s quite a bit less. About 1/200th, actually.

However, China has more than a billion inhabitants, while Luxemburg barely has half a million. So China is 200 times more “powerful” than Luxemburg in economic terms, but needs to have 2000 times more inhabitants to achieve that.

Now which country is economically more developed? China or Luxemburg? That’s why you need GDP per capita. It gives you the wealth of a nation per inhabitant, not in total.