Theresa Worrell: It’s hard to comprehend just how enormous the wealth disparity around the world really is [Infographic]

I’m sure you’ve read that the richest 1% own more than half the world’s wealth.

HowMuch.net created a number of intersting graphics that depicted this well which I’ve included below. The World Map of Billionaires

Over the years I’ve read many studies on this topic and come to the conclusion that GDP per capita is critical metric for understanding the economy.

It’s a measure of a country’s economic output that takes into account the number of people who live there.

GDP per capita takes the gross domestic product and divides it by the number of people who live there.

It’s the best measurement of a country’s standard of living.

It tells you how prosperous a country feels to each of its citizens.

Thee graphic below gathers the data for our series of maps from the International Monetary Fund.

It’s hard to comprehend just how enormous the disparities on this map are.

The colour corresponds to the GDP per capita in each country, with dark green being the richest at over $100,000 and dark pink the poorest at less than $1,000.

A few countries are shaded light grey because data were not available.

What about Australia?

There is a stark illustration of inequality Down Under.

Australia ($56,698) boasts by far the highest GDP per capita, followed by New Zealand ($41,616), both of which are developed economies.

Of course the rest of Oceania, however, contains a large number of relatively poor countries.

Just look at Asia

And this visualisation of Asia is interesting because of the way it distorts the countries.

Geographically, Russia and China dominate the entire continent, but not when it comes to GDP per capita (a paltry $10,950 and $9,633, respectively).

The countries with real economic clout when you consider the size of their populations are all located further south, especially in the Middle East.

Macao, a gambling outpost technically part of China, is incredibly wealthy by these standards ($81,585).

The following graphic adds an additional dimension of size for each region also corresponding to per capita GDP, letting you quickly grasp a comparison between countries apples-to-apples.

Of course, GDP per capita doesn’t necessarily indicate high levels of disposable income, but this approach does let you easily see where the wealthiest countries are.