Skip to content
Nations Inquiry — home

Data for 1948

Historical GDP per Capita (Maddison), 1948

1948, 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), 1948 covers 58 countries. United States is highest, at 14,734; Malawi is lowest, at 514. The middle country reads 3,265. Against 1947, 54 values changed (43 up, 11 down), 4 countries joined, 1 left.

Share

Historical GDP per Capita (Maddison) · Data for 1948

HighestUnited States

14,734

LowestMalawi

514

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), 1948, 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 58 countries · select a heading to sort

Historical GDP per Capita (Maddison), 1948: every country, as published by Maddison Project, Groningen Growth and Development Centre (GGDC).
derived
1United StatesUSANorthern America14,734
2CanadaCANNorthern America11,261
3SwitzerlandCHEWestern Europe11,189
4AustraliaAUSAustralia and New Zealand11,105
5New ZealandNZLAustralia and New Zealand11,045
6United KingdomGBRNorthern Europe10,753
7SwedenSWENorthern Europe9,822
8DenmarkDNKNorthern Europe9,776
9IcelandISLNorthern Europe9,215
10NetherlandsNLDWestern Europe8,751
11ArgentinaARGSouth America8,372
12NorwayNORNorthern Europe8,199
13BelgiumBELWestern Europe8,008
14VenezuelaVENSouth America7,712
15FranceFRAWestern Europe7,002
16FinlandFINNorthern Europe6,307
17ChileCHLSouth America5,939
18UruguayURYSouth America5,853
19IrelandIRLNorthern Europe5,149
20ItalyITASouthern Europe4,814
21GermanyDEUWestern Europe4,517
22AustriaAUTWestern Europe4,406
23South AfricaZAFSouthern Africa3,848
24HungaryHUNEastern Europe3,507
25SpainESPSouthern Europe3,474

02In 1948

At either end

The 5 countries at each end of the headline.

Highest

  1. 1United States14,734
  2. 2Canada11,261
  3. 3Switzerland11,189
  4. 4Australia11,105
  5. 5New Zealand11,045

Lowest

  1. 58Malawi514
  2. 57Zambia944
  3. 56India983
  4. 55Zimbabwe1,036
  5. 54South Korea1,099

A higher value is the better result. The middle country reads 3,265. “Shared” marks a value another country also holds.

031947 → 1948

Since 1947

  • +4 / −1countries joined / left
  • 54values changed, of 54 in both
  • 43 · 11rose · fell
  • 0unchanged

Rose most

Fell most

+ Bulgaria+ Ghana+ Malawi+ Poland− Jamaica

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 1948.

  • Nothing missing

    Every one of the 58 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) (1948). Historical GDP per Capita (Maddison), 1948 [data set], describing 1948. As held by Nations Inquiry, https://nationsinquiry.com/datasets/historical-gdp-per-capita/1948

06112 held

Other years