Source: http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10852462
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Grossly distorted picture
Mar 13th 2008
From The Economist
If you look at GDP per head, the world is a different—and, by and large, a better—place
Using growth in GDP per head rather than crude GDP growth reveals a strikingly different picture of other countries’ economic health…
Focusing on GDP per person also affects comparisons of economic health over time. During the past five years, world GDP has grown by an average of 4.5% a year, its fastest for more than three decades, though not as fast as during the golden age of the 1960s when annual growth exceeded 5%. But the world’s population is now growing at half of its pace in the 1960s, and so world income per head has increased by more over the past five years than during any other period on record (see right-hand chart above). Mankind has never had it so good…
