2 March 2017

Infographic: Here’s How the Global GDP Is Divvied Up

By Robbie Gramer


The World Bank this month released new numbers on the state of the world economy, and the numbers tell an interesting story.

The United States still dominates the global economy, accounting for nearly a quarter of the world’s GDP, which the World Bank estimates to be $74.1 trillion in total. For all the talk of China overtaking the United States as the world’s economic juggernaut, Asia’s economic giant lags 10 percentage points behind — 14.84 percent of the world’s economy compared with the United States’ 24.32 percent. 

Trending Articles

Trump Can’t Deal With Iran If He Doesn’t Understand It

Tweets about putting Iran "ON NOTICE" are no replacement for appreciating the sources of Iranian conduct in the Middle…

Since China overtook Japan as number two in the world in 2011, Japan’s slice of the global GDP has fallen to 5.91 percent the world’s GDP. 

For the non-number junkies out there, the data and market research gurus over at cost information website HowMuch.net put together a helpful diagram using the new numbers to show just who has what slice of the pie in the global economy:


The infographic shows 40 of the world’s largest economies, according to World Bank data from the year 2015, the latest available. The Asian economic bloc of countries accounts for over a third of global GDP, 33.84 percent, representing the largest chunk of the world’s economy. North America comes in at second with 27.95 percent of global GDP, and Europe third at 21.37 percent.

Emerging economies, despite the hype, still account for just a small sliver of the pie. India accounts for 2.83 percent of the world economy, Brazil 2.39 percent, and Nigeria 0.65 percent. As the experts who created the graph point out, the “rest of the world” section (155 countries in all) adds up to roughly the same size as the gap between the United States and China’s share of the world GDP.

Update Feb. 24, 2017, 1:32 p.m. ET: This post was updated to include the World Bank’s estimated dollar amount of the global GDP.

No comments: