• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

What Is The Richest Country In The World? 5 Answers To Make You Rethink The Question

May 20, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

Asking which country is the richest is like asking what the best recipe for dinner is: it sounds like a sensible question, right up until you try to answer it – at which point you realize some pretty important context has been left out. 

Advertisement

Sure, we usually think we know what it means: which nation, when you sum up its total assets and subtract its liabilities, has the biggest number left over at the end? And that definitely is one way to measure the wealth of a country – but it’s not the only method.

Advertisement

So, what’s the richest country in the world? Well, it depends on what you mean.

Richest country by total household wealth

Let’s look at that measure to start with: the total net value of a country’s assets minus the total value of its liabilities. By that standard, you’ll probably not be surprised to learn that the USA takes the prize, with a total wealth of almost $140 trillion, according to the UBS Global Wealth Report 2023.

That’s not just “most comfortably off”, by the way – that’s “fuck you” money. It’s more than 150 percent of the figure for the second wealthiest nation, China – a comparative pauper with only $84 trillion to its name. It’s more than the entire continent of Europe, even; it’s only beaten by the entirety of Asia considered as a whole.

Richest country by average wealth per capita

Just because a country tops the international financial charts, though, doesn’t mean it’s a paradise for those who live there. Looking at the average wealth per capita – that is, the mean amount of wealth held by each individual in the country – shows a very different story, with the top spot taken by none other than Switzerland. 

Advertisement

Citizens of this small, famously neutral, and occasionally explosive country hold an average of just over $685,000 per person – quite a bit more than the $551,000 held by the “average” USian. And, depending on which sources you look at, there’s another country that beats the good old US of A in terms of mean wealth per capita: data experts at Statista have the teeny nation of Luxembourg as boasting an average of almost $586,000.

Richest country by median wealth per capita

Closely related to the average wealth is the median wealth per capita – that is, the amount of wealth held by whoever is exactly in the middle. This theoretical citizen is defined as having exactly as many people in the country richer than them as there are poorer than them – and so, unlike the mean wealth, the figure is less prone to being skewed by a few ultra-rich people at the top.

By this metric, the USA doesn’t even crack the top 10, with the Global Wealth Report placing it at a cool 13th place. Top of the list is Belgium, of all places, whose median citizen has a wealth of just under $250,000; next on the list is Australia, down from first place last year; then Hong Kong takes third.

Country with the most billionaires

Depending on who you ask, either the US is home to the most billionaires, with 813 individuals making the list – or else it’s China, with 814. Regardless of whether China takes the top spot or languishes at around 400, though, one thing seems to be agreed on: the number in the US is going up, while China is currently losing billionaires year-on-year.

Country with the lowest poverty rate

Having the most billionaires in your country may be quite the boast, but most of us are much more likely to end up in poverty than power. But in which nation is that least likely?

This one, we’re going to bet you won’t guess: it’s Slovenia. “By adopting practices such as the free provision of kindergarten education, Slovenia has become one of the countries with the lowest poverty rates in the world,” explains finance website Insider Monkey. “This is why it ranks first on our list.”

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. German industrial orders surge on robust foreign demand
  2. EU fails to confirm if women, young adults at higher clot risk from AstraZeneca shot
  3. Most Plant-Based Milks Are Poorer In Key Micronutrients Than Dairy
  4. The Neurology Of Taste: How Your Brain Perceives Flavor

Source Link: What Is The Richest Country In The World? 5 Answers To Make You Rethink The Question

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • In 2013, A Volcanic Eruption Wiped Out Life On This Remote Island. Then, Somehow, Plants Reemerged
  • 1-Year-Old Orca Takes Out A Big Fat Seal In This Award-Winning – And Extremely Badass – Photo
  • Saturn And Neptune Will Reach Their Brightest In Days – And Look For Saturn’s Temporary Beauty Spot
  • Reindeer Bring A Gift Greater Than Any Of Santa’s – Hope Of A Stable Climate
  • If Deep-Sea Pressure Can Crush A Human Body, How Do Deep-Sea Creatures Not Implode?
  • Meet Ned: The Lonely Lefty Snail Looking For Love
  • “America Will Lead The Next Giant Leap”: NASA Announces New Milestone In Hunt For Exoplanets
  • What Did Neanderthals Sound Like?
  • One Star System Could Soon Dazzle Us Twice With Nova And Supernova Explosions
  • Unethical Experiments: When Scientists Really Should Have Stopped What They Were Doing Immediately
  • The First Humans Were Hunted By Leopards And Weren’t The Apex Predators We Thought They Were
  • Earth’s Passage Through The Galaxy Might Be Written In Its Rocks
  • What Is An Einstein Cross – And Why Is The Latest One Such A Unique Find?
  • If We Found Life On Mars, What Would That Mean For The Fermi Paradox And The Great Filter?
  • The Longest Living Mammals Are Giants That Live Up To 200 Years In The Icy Arctic
  • Entirely New Virus Detected In Bat Urine, And It’s Only The 4th Of Its Kind Ever Isolated
  • The First Ever Full Asteroid History: From Its Doomed Discovery To Collecting Its Meteorites
  • World’s Oldest Pachycephalosaur Fossil Pushes Back These Dinosaurs’ Emergence By 15 Million Years
  • The Hole In The Ozone Layer Is Healing And On Track For Full Recovery In The 21st Century, Thanks To Science
  • First Sweet Potato Genome Reveals They’re Hybrids With A Puzzling Past And 6 Sets Of Chromosomes
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version