Einar H. Dyvik
Research expert covering Nordics and global data for society, economy, and politics
Per capita expenditure in the U.S. - statistics & facts
The term per capita comes from Latin and is idiomatically used in English to mean 鈥減er person,鈥 or 鈥減er head.鈥 Per capita data is often used to make macroeconomic data comparable across different countries. Where absolute data is not comparable 鈥 the GDP of the United States is much larger than the GDP of Luxembourg for example, yet Luxembourg has the highest GDP per capita of any country. This means that the economic output per person in Luxembourg is much higher than in the United States. GDP per capita data can therefore be used instead as it is independent of country size. The ability to compare various metrics - especially spending - across countries has the added advantage of contextualizing numbers that would otherwise seem abstract.
