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| quote: | Originally posted by dan hernan
How well the economy is doing does correlate with living coditions, at least 99% of the time. You don't expect a country let's say in Africa with GDP per capita with $100 to have excelent hospitals, water, electricity, maybe internet etc.
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uh.
no.
a country can have a relatively tiny economy, and have ppl with excellent conditions, better than that of nations with massive economies, and more market power in the general scale. Take some of the gulf countries, especially the non-democratic ones. The ppl get so much money from the government, because the government makes so much money from the oil reserves, and gives much of it to the people.
actually, living conditions is in itself, kind of a hard thing to sort out, because it's purely an average. So in a country of 1000 people, u may have 1 person with an income of 1billion dollars per anum. the rest may earn 1c per anum. that averages out to $10,000 pa average. THis certainly isn't the only factor in determining living conditions, but it's probably the biggest.
Australia has a GDP per capita of $ 30,700. 17th on the global rank.
US has a GDP per capita of $ 40,100. 2nd.
Mostly Becasue of the social security benifits, and FREE PUBLIC health care, Australia has a better living condition (from memory, about 5-10th in the global scale. Oh yah... and we have kangaroos.
I used Australia and US as an example. THese are pretty well-known, common countries. So it's not just a one-off instance of my point.
GDP per capita is just an indication of how much GDP per person is in a country. IF living is expensive, and the gap between poor and rich is big, then living conditions are shit.
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