Study Notes

GDP Per Head (Economic Well-being)

Level:
AS, A-Level, IB
Board:
AQA, Edexcel, OCR, IB, Eduqas, WJEC

Last updated 29 Dec 2017

GDP per head (or GDP per capita) is one of the key measures of changes in economic well-being across countries.

Income per capita in countries of the European Union

Changes in GDP per head for a selection of countries is shown in the chart.

Poland and Greece represent 2 extremes in growth in GDP per head since 2007.

Poland was largely unaffected by the economic downturn - it was one of the few countries inside OECD to avoid a full-blown economic recession - and the data shows that Poland recorded 0.8% average annual growth in GDP per head between Quarter 1 2007 and Quarter 3 2016. This was the best performance of all OECD countries.

Selected countries - GDP per head

In contrast, GDP per head in Greece contracted in 25 of the 38 quarters between Quarter 1 2007 and Quarter 3 2016 – the highest number of all OECD countries. There has been a severe reduction in per capita incomes brought about by a process of internal devaluation and accentuated by the effects of deep fiscal austerity.

Daily Email Updates

Subscribe to our daily digest and get the day’s content delivered fresh to your inbox every morning at 7am.

Signup for emails

© 2002-2025 Tutor2u Limited. Company Reg no: 04489574. VAT reg no 816865400.