Political Calculations: Battle of the Titans: U.S. vs E.U. GDP per Capita, 2008

January 19, 2010

Battle of the Titans: U.S. vs E.U. GDP per Capita, 2008

It's on! Again! Only now, instead of just pitting the nations of the European Union against the individual states of the United States, the ongoing battle for the title of being the world's top GDP generator per capita has erupted on a new front with two heavyweights from the econoblogosphere pitted against each other: Paul Krugman vs Mark Perry!

It seems that Krugman launched the first salvo by praising the economies of Europe:

The real lesson from Europe is actually the opposite of what conservatives claim: Europe is an economic success, and that success shows that social democracy works.

Since 1980 — when our politics took a sharp turn to the right, while Europe’s didn’t — America’s real G.D.P. has grown, on average, 3 percent per year. Meanwhile, the E.U. 15 — the bloc of 15 countries that were members of the European Union before it was enlarged to include a number of former Communist nations — has grown only 2.2 percent a year. America rules!

Or maybe not. All this really says is that we’ve had faster population growth. Since 1980, per capita real G.D.P. — which is what matters for living standards — has risen at about the same rate in America and in the E.U. 15: 1.95 percent a year here; 1.83 percent there.

[...]

The point isn’t that Europe is utopia. Like the United States, it’s having trouble grappling with the current financial crisis. Like the United States, Europe’s big nations face serious long-run fiscal issues — and like some individual U.S. states, some European countries are teetering on the edge of fiscal crisis. (Sacramento is now the Athens of America — in a bad way.) But taking the longer view, the European economy works; it grows; it’s as dynamic, all in all, as our own.

But is it really? Mark Perry takes a different view, arguing that Europe's socialist policies have noticeably depressed Europe's living standards, even in physical terms. So much so, that on Krugman's preferred measure of real per capita GDP, European nations compare only to the poorest of U.S. states.

And that's where we come in. We've updated our ranking of individual European nations with respect to individual U.S. states and constructed a dynamic table in which all the players can be ranked according to their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), population and their GDP-PPP per Capita for 2008.

We've put this data into the dynamic table you see below, which will allow you to sort the data in the table by clicking on the various column headings. Doing so will almost instantaneously sort the data in the table from low to high value or from high to low (by clicking a column heading a second time.) To restore the original order, you'll need to refresh this page in your web browser.

How do real living standards in Europe's socialist democratic economic powerhouses rank with respect to individual U.S. states? Scroll down and click the column heading for "GDP-PPP per Capita" to find out!

U.S. States vs E.U. Nations: 2008 GDP-PPP Rankings

US State or EU Nation	2008 GDP-PPP [billions USD]	2008 Population	2008 GDP-PPP per Capita [USD]
United States - All	14,165.6	304,059,724	46,588.10
US - Alabama	170.0	4,661,900	36,468.82
US - Alaska	47.9	686,293	69,812.75
US - Arizona	248.9	6,500,180	38,289.40
US - Arkansas	98.3	2,855,390	34,436.98
US - California	1,846.8	36,756,666	50,242.78
US - Colorado	248.6	4,939,456	50,330.04
US - Connecticut	216.2	3,501,252	61,741.91
US - Delaware	61.8	873,092	70,814.99
US - District of Columbia	97.2	591,833	164,294.66
US - Florida	744.1	18,328,340	40,599.42
US - Georgia	397.8	9,685,744	41,066.13
US - Hawaii	63.8	1,288,198	49,563.03
US - Idaho	52.7	1,523,816	34,615.07
US - Illinois	633.7	12,901,563	49,117.85
US - Indiana	254.9	6,376,792	39,966.96
US - Iowa	135.7	3,002,555	45,195.51
US - Kansas	122.7	2,802,134	43,799.12
US - Kentucky	156.4	4,269,245	36,642.54
US - Louisiana	222.2	4,410,796	50,380.48
US - Maine	49.7	1,316,456	37,759.71
US - Maryland	273.3	5,633,597	48,518.38
US - Massachusetts	365.0	6,497,967	56,169.57
US - Michigan	382.5	10,003,422	38,241.31
US - Minnesota	262.8	5,220,393	50,350.04
US - Mississippi	91.8	2,938,618	31,233.05
US - Missouri	237.8	5,911,605	40,225.45
US - Montana	35.9	967,440	37,098.94
US - Nebraska	83.3	1,783,432	46,692.56
US - Nevada	131.2	2,600,167	50,470.99
US - New Hampshire	60.0	1,315,809	45,603.12
US - New Jersey	474.9	8,682,661	54,699.36
US - New Mexico	79.9	1,984,356	40,265.46
US - New York	1,144.5	19,490,297	58,720.55
US - North Carolina	400.2	9,222,414	43,393.41
US - North Dakota	31.2	641,481	48,649.92
US - Ohio	471.5	11,485,910	41,050.99
US - Oklahoma	146.4	3,642,361	40,206.89
US - Oregon	161.6	3,790,060	42,630.72
US - Pennsylvania	553.3	12,448,279	44,447.99
US - Rhode Island	47.4	1,050,788	45,074.74
US - South Carolina	156.4	4,479,800	34,908.70
US - South Dakota	37.0	804,194	45,957.82
US - Tennessee	252.1	6,214,888	40,568.23
US - Texas	1,223.5	24,326,974	50,294.42
US - Utah	109.8	2,736,424	40,116.96
US - Vermont	25.4	621,270	40,951.60
US - Virginia	397.0	7,769,089	51,103.16
US - Washington	322.8	6,549,224	49,284.92
US - West Virginia	61.7	1,814,468	33,978.00
US - Wisconsin	240.4	5,627,967	42,720.40
US - Wyoming	35.3	532,668	66,288.95
European Union - All	15,311.2	491,018,683	31,182.49
EU - Austria	331.2	8,205,533	40,363.01
EU - Belgium	390.2	10,403,951	37,504.98
EU - Bulgaria	94.0	7,262,675	12,940.14
EU - Cyprus	22.8	792,604	28,715.47
EU - Czech Republic	264.8	10,220,911	25,907.67
EU - Denmark	204.1	5,484,723	37,212.45
EU - Estonia	28.0	1,307,605	21,436.14
EU - Finland	194.0	5,244,749	36,989.38
EU - France	2,133.0	64,057,792	33,298.06
EU - Germany	2,925.0	82,369,552	35,510.69
EU - Greece	343.8	10,722,816	32,062.47
EU - Hungary	196.7	9,930,915	19,806.84
EU - Ireland	189.0	4,156,119	45,475.12
EU - Italy	1,827.0	58,145,320	31,421.27
EU - Latvia	39.0	2,245,423	17,346.40
EU - Lithuania	63.4	3,565,205	17,774.57
EU - Luxembourg	39.5	486,006	81,212.99
EU - Malta	9.9	403,532	24,615.15
EU - Netherlands	673.5	16,645,313	40,461.84
EU - Poland	670.7	38,500,696	17,420.46
EU - Portugal	237.3	10,676,910	22,225.53
EU - Romania	272.0	22,246,862	12,226.44
EU - Slovakia	119.8	5,455,407	21,959.86
EU - Slovenia	59.5	2,007,711	29,630.76
EU - Spain	1,402.0	40,491,052	34,624.93
EU - Sweden	345.1	9,045,389	38,152.04
EU - United Kingdom	2,236.0	60,943,912	36,689.47

Sources and Acknowledgements:

2008 US State GDP Data: Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. Department of Commerce, All Industry Total
2008 US State Population Estimates (July 1, 2008): US Census [Excel spreadsheet]
2008 EU Nation GDP-PPP Data: The World Factbook, 2008
2008 EU Nation Population Estimates (July 1, 2008): The World Factbook, 2008
Dynamic Table Sorting Function: The Daily Kryogenix.

The GDP and population data for the United States as a whole, as well as for the European Union as a whole, was obtained by adding up the state and national values we found for each. GDP-PPP per capita was found by dividing each region's 2007 GDP figure by its population estimate as of July 1, 2007.