Skip to content
Nations Inquiry — home

Data for 1939

Historical GDP per Capita (Maddison), 1939

1939, as GGDC’s 2023 release gives it · stored as published, never rewritten

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.

Historical GDP per Capita (Maddison), 1939 covers 61 countries. United States is highest, at 11,171; Malawi is lowest, at 683. The middle country reads 2,976. Against 1938, 59 values changed (42 up, 17 down), 1 country joined, 7 left.

Download CSVCite this year
Share

Share this page

Historical GDP per Capita (Maddison) · Data for 1939

HighestUnited States

11,171

LowestMalawi

683

Shaded by value in five groups of equal size, darkest at the better end.

01Position · derived

The table

Every country and every column of Historical GDP per Capita (Maddison), 1939, as published. GGDC ranks nobody on this measure; the position is derived here by ordering the published values. “=” marks a shared position.

Showing 25 of 61 countries · select a heading to sort

Historical GDP per Capita (Maddison), 1939: every country, as published by Maddison Project, Groningen Growth and Development Centre (GGDC).
derived
1United StatesUSANorthern America11,171
2New ZealandNZLAustralia and New Zealand10,297
3United KingdomGBRNorthern Europe9,982
4SwitzerlandCHEWestern Europe9,836
5DenmarkDNKNorthern Europe9,553
6AustraliaAUSAustralia and New Zealand9,318
7NetherlandsNLDWestern Europe8,837
8GermanyDEUWestern Europe8,617
9SwedenSWENorthern Europe8,370
10BelgiumBELWestern Europe8,209
11FranceFRAWestern Europe7,640
12CanadaCANNorthern America7,600
13NorwayNORNorthern Europe7,079
14ArgentinaARGSouth America6,612
15AustriaAUTWestern Europe6,529
16FinlandFINNorthern Europe5,432
17UruguayURYSouth America5,322
18ItalyITASouthern Europe5,246
19ChileCHLSouth America5,106
20IcelandISLNorthern Europe4,980
21IrelandIRLNorthern Europe4,865
22JapanJPNEastern Asia4,804
23VenezuelaVENSouth America4,538
24HungaryHUNEastern Europe4,524
25GreeceGRCSouthern Europe4,205

02In 1939

At either end

The 5 countries at each end of the headline.

Highest

  1. 1United States11,171
  2. 2New Zealand10,297
  3. 3United Kingdom9,982
  4. 4Switzerland9,836
  5. 5Denmark9,553

Lowest

  1. 61Malawi683
  2. 60Zambia931
  3. 59Zimbabwe966
  4. 58Nigeria1,012
  5. 57India1,074

A higher value is the better result. The middle country reads 2,976. “Shared” marks a value another country also holds.

031938 → 1939

Since 1938

  • +1 / −7countries joined / left
  • 59values changed, of 60 in both
  • 42 · 17rose · fell
  • 1unchanged

Rose most

Fell most

+ Paraguay− China− Jamaica− Kenya− Myanmar− Poland− Thailand− Uganda

04Caveats

Read before you use

Using the series

  • One year of the 2023 release

    Every year in this series comes from GGDC’s 2023 release, recalculated on one method, so a change from one year to the next is not a revision. It can differ from what was first published for 1939.

  • 59 distinct values among 61

    Values are stored exactly as published, to 13 decimals. 2 countries share 3,037. Countries sharing a value share a position too.

  • Nothing missing

    Every one of the 61 countries has every column.

05The files

Download and cite

Licence in full

What this site changed: Reshaped to one row per country, with its ISO code; no value recalculated, rescaled or rounded. In full

Licence: CC BY 4.0 · what it allows, in plain words

Cite this edition

Maddison Project, Groningen Growth and Development Centre (GGDC) (1939). Historical GDP per Capita (Maddison), 1939 [data set], describing 1939. As held by Nations Inquiry, https://nationsinquiry.com/datasets/historical-gdp-per-capita/1939

06112 held

Other years