Update of WID.world macroeconomic aggregates to 2018

WID.world has updated its external data on macroeconomic aggregates: national accounts and price data, as well as population indicators, are now available for 2018.

WID.world has national income aggregates for about 99% of the world population. The national income of a country corresponds to its gross domestic product (GDP) minus its consumption of fixed capital (CFC) added to its national foreign income (NFI), which makes it a more relevant measure of its total income than the GDP.

WID.world uses new methods to compute NFI and CFC figures in order to correct for statistical discrepancies. In particular we take into account the missing foreign income problem, which is partly due to tax evasion. For more information on the methodology, please refer to the WID.world working paper “National Accounts Series Methodology” by T. Blanchet and L.Chancel (2016/1).

In 2018, total global income was of €88,940 billion, with an average of €17,650 per adult and per year. Global national income per adult increased by 2.9% in 2017, which is slightly higher than the average annual growth rate of 2.3% since 2010.

Based on the World Inequality Report 2018‘s findings, we estimate the average income of the bottom 50% of the global income distribution (the poorest half of the world population) at about €3,400 per year and per adult in 2018, while it was of €360,000 for the top 1%. See more on WID.world global inequality estimates here.

You can also visualize some of WID.world national accounts series here:

• Average national income per adult across the world
• Average gross domestic product per adult across the world
• Average net foreign income per adult across the world