Top 20 Countries by Annual GDP (PPP) from 1800 to 2040

In the past, I have made a number of posts comparing countries by GDP (Gross Domestic Product). I always use GDP (Nominal) vice GDP (PPP – Purchasing Power Parity). Some people have asked why I don’t use GDP (PPP). Well here is a youtube.com video based upon that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-2nqd6-ZXg

One will note that the video starts in 1800 with China by far the richest country in the world and India second. Yet during the 1800s the much poorer (by this video) United Kingdom already occupied parts of India and continued expanding their control. The “poorer” European powers then started carving up China. In 1937 the GDP (PPP) of Japan is 220 million while the GDP (PPP) of China is 530 million. Yet who is invading whom?

Here is a video based upon GDP (Nominal), covering 1960 -2017. It is curious as it leaves out the Soviet Union completely (but does include Russia): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wykaDgXoajc

Here is one on projected GDP (Nominal), projecting from 2018 to 2100: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9l2yCH5wBk

Some of these figures are hard to explain in light of the demographic challenges facing countries like China and Japan. In the case of China they will most likely experience negative population growth by 2030. Japan has already reached that point.

Demographics of China

Demographics of Japan

 

One must treat all this “infoporn” with considerable caution.

It does seem that PPP overinflates the appearance of national power, although it may be perfectly valid for measuring per capita income and comparative standards of living.

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Christopher A. Lawrence
Christopher A. Lawrence

Christopher A. Lawrence is a professional historian and military analyst. He is the Executive Director and President of The Dupuy Institute, an organization dedicated to scholarly research and objective analysis of historical data related to armed conflict and the resolution of armed conflict. The Dupuy Institute provides independent, historically-based analyses of lessons learned from modern military experience.

Mr. Lawrence was the program manager for the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base, the Kursk Data Base, the Modern Insurgency Spread Sheets and for a number of other smaller combat data bases. He has participated in casualty estimation studies (including estimates for Bosnia and Iraq) and studies of air campaign modeling, enemy prisoner of war capture rates, medium weight armor, urban warfare, situational awareness, counterinsurgency and other subjects for the U.S. Army, the Defense Department, the Joint Staff and the U.S. Air Force. He has also directed a number of studies related to the military impact of banning antipersonnel mines for the Joint Staff, Los Alamos National Laboratories and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation.

His published works include papers and monographs for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation, in addition to over 40 articles written for limited-distribution newsletters and over 60 analytical reports prepared for the Defense Department. He is the author of Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka (Aberdeen Books, Sheridan, CO., 2015), America’s Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam (Casemate Publishers, Philadelphia & Oxford, 2015), War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat (Potomac Books, Lincoln, NE., 2017) and The Battle of Prokhorovka (Stackpole Books, Guilford, CT., 2019)

Mr. Lawrence lives in northern Virginia, near Washington, D.C., with his wife and son.

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4 Comments

  1. Well, in the first case market exchange rates may understate the resources that are allocated towards the war effort, while the latter incorporates the relative prizes of non commitment bundles that can influence the analysis by relying on irrelevant items (granted that the civil sector translates into the military sector). This still leaves the influence of the dollar as a world currency.
    You need significantly more indicators than mere GDPs to assess military power, in both cases these tools are insufficient to deliver an adequate answer (not factoring out possible errors in wealth assessment and computations of “the great divergence”).
    In this case market rates may give a better overview of the global influence of the respective player. What is required, is a military PPP in relation to government spending for each category (e.g. Capital, Operations).

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