SA - USA Comparison of GDP

Just how big is the US Economy?

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a convenient way of measuring and comparing the size of national economies. Annual GDP represents the market value of all goods and services produced within a country in a year. Put differently:

GDP = consumption + investment + government spending + (exports - imports)

The creator of this map had the interesting idea to break down that gigantic US GDP into the GDPs of individual states, and compare those to other countries' GDP. What follows, is this slightly misleading map, misleading, because the economies both of the US states and of the countries they are compared with are not weighted for their respective populations.

Pakistan, for example in 2007, has a GDP that's slightly higher than Israel's - but Pakistan has a population of about 170 million, while Israel is only 7 million people strong. The US states those economies are compared with (Arkansas and Oregon, respectively) are much closer to each other in population: 2,7 million and 3,4 million.

And yet, while a per capita GDP might give a good indication of the average wealth of citizens, a ranking of the economies on this map does serve two interesting purposes: it shows the size of US states' economies in 2007 relative to each other (California is the biggest, Wyoming the smallest), and it links those sizes with foreign economies . (http://bigthink.com/ideas/21182)

The United States of America has the largest and most technologically powerful economy in the world, with a per capita GDP of $47,400 in 2010. South Africa is an emerging market with an abundant supply of natural resources; a well-developed financial, legal, communications, and a stock exchange that is the 18th largest in the world. In 2010 its per capita GDP was calculated to be $10,700. South Africa's GDP could be compared to that of the State of Wisconsin.

Interesting Comparisons

(Note: data are in 2010 US dollars)

Links:

http://www.photius.com/rankings/index.html

Aneesa Khan | Finance Dept.