According to the latest list of the richest countries, which is based on the International Monetary Fund data published by Global Finance magazine, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) is ranked 96th, with a GDP of $ 13,513 per capita.
Serbia is in the 85th place with GDP of $ 16,090, while Croatia is ranked 61st with GDP of $ 26,216 per capita, and the best ranked in the region is Slovenia, which is at 41st place with a GDP of $ 36,826.
The richest and poorest countries are simply explained by taking the gross domestic product (GDP)—the total value of goods and services produced within each nation—then the richest five countries in the world are, in order, the United States, China, Germany, Japan and the UK. Yet those rankings don’t tell us much about relative living conditions.
Similarly, the poorest five are, in order, Tuvalu, Nauru, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, and Palau. These countries yield little in annual production largely because they are so very very small—no more than dots in the Pacific Ocean on a world map. Again, aggregate numbers don’t tell us much about living conditions.
A more accurate picture of living conditions begins with dividing the total production by the number of people, to look at GDP per capita. Per capita GDP tells a little more about how much wealth might be available to each individual person. Still, what about currency fluctuations? Or the varying cost of necessary items such as food, clothing and shelter? To know whether a country’s citizens are wealthy, we want to understand how much they are able to buy. Thus, final adjustment factors in purchasing power.
GDP-PPP makes for a better comparison of living standards, because PPP takes into account cost of living and inflation rates, rather than just exchange rates, which may distort the real differences in income. This is the measure most economists prefer for comparing living conditions and economic strength across countries.
