How is India top 5 in gdp while 81% of their population live in poverty
In: Economics
You are mixing up GDP and GDP per capita. Per capita is where the population plays a role.
GDP is regardless of population.
LOL! 81% of India lives in poverty? No way man. As per UN reports, 15% of India lives in poverty – which is quite an achievement for a democratic country of 1.5 billion people. And this figure continues to improve.
If a billion people have 1$ each, its a billion dollars in total but still a billion poor people
A big number (GDP) divided by an absolutely *massive* number (the population) is a very small number.
Have you heard of capitalism before? Basically that as well as the fact that they have a huge population
GDP measures consumption – that’s literally it. India has A LOT of consumers, even if they’re technically poor. So, since GDP just measures how much money is spent in an economy, it’s very high. The poverty portion of your question would refer (more closely) to GDP *per capita*.
To be clear, entire concept of poverty is a social construct – what it means in one context is very different than others. Canadian poverty, for example, is very different from Indian poverty. Our perceptions of how poor people are is largely in relation to our own conceptions of poverty.
India’s GDP is $4.1 trillion. Their GDP per capita (per person) is $2,850.
The UK’s GDP is $3.6 trillion. Their GDP per capita is $52,430.
India’s overall GDP is massive because they have so many people. But their output per person is actually very low.
We have a really huge population but I don’t think that’s it, also consider wealth disparity because top 10% of Indians hold 75% of wealth while bottom half has 4.1% of wealth.
India is in the top 5 BECAUSE most of the population live in poverty. The exploitation by a handful of outrageously wealthy companies and individuals generates tremendous GDP at the expense of the majority of the population.
Because GDP is not a good measure of a country’s internal quality of life. It literally just shows how much they’re producing—has zero measure for poverty, quality of healthcare, education, etc.
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