The Economist recently published an interactive map of the U.S. comparing states with countries on population and Gross Domestic Product (GDP*). The comparison on states and countries with nearest equivalent GDP figures is surprising. However, even more interesting is to compare the GDP per person in these matched pairs. While these numbers are higher than the average income per person (GDP includes more than that) it is a good indicator of relative wealth.  It also is an interesting comparison that challenges widely held beliefs and reinforces others.  For example it is easy to believe that Bangla Desh and Mississippi have similar GDPs, but would you guess that Mississippi is 50X wealthier per person? Would you have thought that Michigan in 2009 had the same GDP as Taiwan? Or that Michigan has 2.36 times more GDP$ per person?  Australia and New York are relatively equal in both GDP and population, but it is still rather amazing that one state equals an entire continent.

This comparison shows that not every US state has a higher GDP/per person than the $GDP-equivalent country.  Maine’s GDP of $52B is equivalent to Luxembourg, and with Luxembourg’s tiny population, they enjoy $104K each, 2.6 times more than $GDP/per Maine-iac. 8 other states including North Carolina(Sweden), Ohio (Belgium), Tennessee, Wisconsin, Missouri (Finland), Florida (Netherlands), and New Jersey (Switzerland) fall short of  GDP/per person in the GDP-equivalent country.

As one might expect, the largest states California and Texas have GDPs many times larger than the other states. But would you compare Texas to all of Russia? If you were from Texas it probably wouldn’t surprise you that it has 5.7 times as much money per person as Russia.

Considering it’s well known that the U.S. with 5% of the world population consumes most of the world’s resources, GDP$/per person in the US has to be generally higher. Now we know how high that is.   In mapping equivalent GDPs to the U.S., 311 million people produce as much as 1.8 Billion people do, with an average GDP/person over 6x higher. The average US GDP/person is $45,856 . For the GDP-equivalent countries, GDP/person is  $7,644.

And which state has the highest $GDP per person? Hint: It’s not a state. The GDP/person is $165000. The country with equivalent GDP is Kuwait which has a GDP/person of $32000 famous for free medical care, and college tuition for every citizen. Name this paradise on the Potomac. Just when you felt rich, you realized that you are not when compared to the few who are insanely rich. And considering what Kuwait does for its citizens on only $32K each, one wonders why we can’t do as well.

Below is the complete table. *GDP  is  the total market values of goods and services produced by workers and capital within a nation’s borders during a given period (usually 1 year).

Click to enlarge