Dataset · GGDC
Historical GDP per Capita (Maddison)
112 years, 1820–2022 · 166 countries
Historical GDP per capita follows each country's output per person back to 1820, in 2011 international dollars, from the Maddison Project Database. It joins economic historians' reconstructions of old national accounts onto modern statistics, so that incomes two centuries apart can be set on one scale.
This site holds every year from 1820 to 2022, read from GGDC’s own data and stored exactly as published.
Historical GDP per Capita (Maddison) · the file
- Newest
- Historical GDP per Capita (Maddison), 2022
- Held
- 112 years · 13,912 rows
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
01112 years
Every year
Every year comes from GGDC’s 2023 release, recalculated on one method. Each opens the full table for that year; each downloads as a CSV.
| Year | Countries | Change | Read | Download |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Historical GDP per Capita (Maddison), 2022Newest | 166 | ±0 | September 29, 2026 | CSV |
| Historical GDP per Capita (Maddison), 2021 | 166 | ±0 | September 29, 2026 | CSV |
| Historical GDP per Capita (Maddison), 2020 | 166 | ±0 | September 29, 2026 | CSV |
| Historical GDP per Capita (Maddison), 2019 | 166 | ±0 | September 29, 2026 | CSV |
| Historical GDP per Capita (Maddison), 2018 | 166 | ±0 | September 29, 2026 | CSV |
| Historical GDP per Capita (Maddison), 2017 | 166 | ±0 | September 29, 2026 | CSV |
| Historical GDP per Capita (Maddison), 2016 | 166 | ±0 | September 29, 2026 | CSV |
| Historical GDP per Capita (Maddison), 2015 | 166 | ±0 | September 29, 2026 | CSV |
| Historical GDP per Capita (Maddison), 2014 | 166 | ±0 | September 29, 2026 | CSV |
| Historical GDP per Capita (Maddison), 2013 | 166 | ±0 | September 29, 2026 | CSV |
| Historical GDP per Capita (Maddison), 2012 | 166 | ±0 | September 29, 2026 | CSV |
| Historical GDP per Capita (Maddison), 2011 | 166 | ±0 | September 29, 2026 | CSV |
Show all 112 years
Every year in one file, one row per country per year: historical-gdp-per-capita-all-editions-nations-inquiry.csv
02Before you compare
Using the series
Levels anchored to price benchmarks
The figures are in 2011 international dollars, but early levels were never measured in those prices. The project sets how rich countries were relative to one another with price comparisons for chosen benchmark years, then runs each country's growth rates backwards and forwards from them. The release held here keeps the original 1990 comparison, uses the 2011 one after 1990, and adds a 1909 comparison of the United States and Britain for years before 1940. Comparisons of level between countries weaken, the project notes, the further a year lies from a benchmark.
Country lines pieced together by period
Each country's line joins separate studies, period by period. The workbook's Sources sheet names them, and a second sheet lists the sources behind the original estimates, last revised in 2010. From 2008 onward the figures come from the Conference Board's Total Economy Database where it covers a country, and from UN national accounts statistics otherwise. A few early series describe only part of today's country, and the Sources sheet marks each one, so read it before comparing rows for 1820 or 1870.
Occasional releases that change the method
New releases appear at intervals of several years, not annually; the project's site lists earlier ones dated 2010, 2013, 2018 and 2020. They differ in method as well as data. The 2018 update followed the Penn World Table's multiple-benchmark approach, and the 2020 update partly went back to the original approach because the 2018 results clashed with current findings of economic historians. A figure taken from another release can therefore differ because of method alone. Use a single release throughout, and cite it by name.
033 columns
What’s in the file
Every column, what it holds, how it is stored and what its values look like — what a reader needs before opening the file.
| Column | What it holds | Stored as | Range, 2022 | Distinct | Empty | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
CountrycountryName | The country’s name, as this file spells it. | Text | — | 166 | 0 | |
ISO Codecountry_codeIdentifier | The ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 code, added by this site. Every table here joins on it. | Text · 3 letters | — | 166 | 0 | |
GDP per capita (2011 international $)gdp_per_capitaHeadline | The headline figure: GDP per capita (2011 international $). | Number · up to 13 decimals | 596 Central African Republic149,171 Qatarmiddle 12,890 | 166 | 0 |
Profiled from the newest file. Range: the lowest and highest value, with the country holding it when only one does. Spread: countries in ten equal steps from lowest to highest. A higher value is the better result.
04166 countries across every year
Who is covered
How many countries each year holds, continent by continent, who joined and who left, and which places this site covers that the dataset never has.
| 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Africa | 51 | 51 | 51 | 51 | 51 | 51 | 51 | 51 | 51 | 51 | 51 | 51 |
| Americas | 28 | 28 | 28 | 28 | 28 | 28 | 28 | 28 | 28 | 28 | 28 | 28 |
| Asia | 46 | 46 | 46 | 46 | 46 | 46 | 46 | 46 | 46 | 46 | 46 | 46 |
| Europe | 39 | 39 | 39 | 39 | 39 | 39 | 39 | 39 | 39 | 39 | 39 | 39 |
| Oceania | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| All | 166 | 166 | 166 | 166 | 166 | 166 | 166 | 166 | 166 | 166 | 166 | 166 |
The newest 12 of 112 years.
Who joined and who left
- 1993
+ United Arab Emirates - 1991− United Arab Emirates
- 1990
+ North Korea - 1985
+ Slovakia - 1980
+ Armenia
+ Azerbaijan
+ Belarus
+ Estonia
+ Georgia
+ Kazakhstan
+ Kyrgyzstan
+ Lithuania
+ Latvia
+ Moldova
+ Tajikistan
+ Turkmenistan
+ Ukraine
+ Uzbekistan - 1974− Armenia− Azerbaijan− Belarus− Estonia− Georgia− Kazakhstan− Kyrgyzstan− Lithuania− Latvia− Moldova− Tajikistan− Turkmenistan− Ukraine− Uzbekistan
- 1973+ Armenia+ Azerbaijan+ Belarus+ Estonia+ Georgia+ Kazakhstan+ Kyrgyzstan+ Lithuania+ Latvia+ Moldova+ Tajikistan+ Turkmenistan+ Ukraine+ Uzbekistan
- 1970
+ Czechia
Not in this dataset · 59 places this site covers
GGDC gives no figure for these in any year held here. It is the publisher’s choice of scope, and each place’s profile shows what is measured.
American Samoa
Andorra
Anguilla
Antigua and Barbuda
Aruba
Bahamas
Belize
Bermuda
Bhutan
British Virgin Islands
Brunei
Cayman IslandsChannel Islands
Cook Islands
Curaçao
Eritrea
Faroe Islands
Fiji
French Polynesia
Gibraltar
Greenland
Grenada
Guam
Guyana
Isle of Man
Kiribati
Kosovo
Liechtenstein
Macau
Maldives
Marshall Islands
Micronesia
Monaco
Montserrat
Nauru
New Caledonia
NiueNorthern Cyprus
Northern Mariana Islands
Palau
Papua New Guinea
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Martin
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Samoa
San Marino
Sint Maarten
Solomon Islands
SomaliaSomaliland
South Sudan
Suriname
Timor-Leste
Tonga
Turks and Caicos Islands
Tuvalu
United States Virgin Islands
Vanuatu
Vatican City05Provenance
Where it comes from
The path from the publisher to this page, and what was checked and changed on the way.
1 · Publisher
Maddison Project, Groningen Growth and Development Centre (GGDC)
2 · Their file
Maddison Project Database 2023 — GDP per capita, 2022
3 · Read by this site
September 29, 2026
Imported by a script that parses each figure and writes it down unrounded.4 · Stored as
112 files, one per year
Each downloads as a CSV, or every year together as historical-gdp-per-capita-all-editions-nations-inquiry.csv5 · Used on
Its statistic page, and every profile it measures
Precision
The headline is stored to 13 decimals, as published.
Rounded by this site
Never. Tables on screen may show fewer decimals; the files never do.
Changed by this site
Reshaped into one row per country: regional and income-group totals are left out, only the columns listed are kept, each row gets its ISO 3166 code, and some country names are brought to one spelling. No value is recalculated, rescaled or rounded.
From the Maddison Project Database 2023, published by the Groningen Growth and Development Centre. Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia are left out because their successor states are included for every year. The database names the historians behind each country's figures on the Sources sheet of its workbook.
06Reuse
Licence and credit
What the publisher’s licence lets you do, what it asks of you, and a credit line and citation ready to copy.
Licence · checked September 29, 2026
- Share and redistribute it
- Adapt it and build on it
- Use it commercially
- Credit the publisher
- Say what you changed
Share, adapt and use commercially. Credit the publisher and say if you changed anything.
In plain words
Free to reuse, commercially too, with credit to the Maddison Project. The project also asks that the historians behind a country’s figures be cited when the data are charted; they are listed on the Sources sheet of its workbook.
A credit line
Source: Maddison Project, Groningen Growth and Development Centre (GGDC), Historical GDP per Capita (Maddison), via Nations Inquiry.
Cite this dataset
Maddison Project, Groningen Growth and Development Centre (GGDC). Historical GDP per Capita (Maddison), 1820–2022 [data set]. As held by Nations Inquiry, https://nationsinquiry.com/datasets/historical-gdp-per-capita
The publisher’s own citation: Bolt, Jutta and Jan Luiten van Zanden (2024). Maddison style estimates of the evolution of the world economy: A new 2023 update. Journal of Economic Surveys, 1–41. https://doi.org/10.1111/joes.12618 (Maddison Project Database, version 2023).
Plain-language summary, not legal advice. The licence text is what binds.