We decided to revisit the Mercatus Center's RegData database, this time to compare recent U.S. Presidents. Although the database only goes back to 1997 and covers the period through 2010, that's enough to span at least a portion of the terms of three Presidents: Bill Clinton (3 years), George W. Bush (8 years) and Barack Obama (2 years). The chart below shows what we found when we calculated the average number of new rules, regulations and restrictions imposed upon Americans per year by each President:

Under which President do you suppose the U.S. economy performed the best for each indicated period of time?

Also note: the chart above doesn't even begin to consider the growing regulatory burden of ObamaCare! (HT: Newmark's Door) Or all those really ugly regulations the Obama administration is holding off on issuing until after the election....

Labels: politics, rankings

- posted by Ironman at 9:29 PM | Permalink | Home |

Are engineers really smarter than business students? How do people studying the social sciences stack up against those studying physical sciences? And where exactly do the people who presumably plan to teach children for a living fit into the relative smarts picture?

Sure, it would be nice to use good old-fashioned IQ-type tests to resolve these questions once and for all, but maybe the next best thing is to compare the performance of students who are required to take the GRE (the Graduate Record Examination) as a prerequisite for entering into a graduate school to pursue a Masters degree.

Here, we can measure school smarts by considering how the students taking the GRE's various component exams, which are designed to assess the prospective graduate student's Analytical Writing, Verbal Reasoning and Quantitative Reasoning skills performed on each GRE component. We can then compare the relative performance of students in different majors according to the average results recorded for each graduate major program that the GRE-takers declared they intended to enter.

The dynamic table below reveals the GRE results by major recorded for 2007-2008. Just click the table's column headings to sort the data in the table from either high to low, or again to sort the data low to high, according to the selected column heading category. (Note: The dynamic sorting feature will only work if you've enabled JavaScript on your web browser, and then only if you access the dynamic table directly on Political Calculations - like our tools, it won't work on sites who simply republish just our RSS feed!)

Overall, we find that engineers are indeed much smarter than business majors where quantitative reasoning skills are involved, but only have a small advantage where verbal reasoning skills come into play and are on a nearly even keel for analytical writing ability. Meanwhile, we find that students of the physical sciences outclass their social science peers in quantitative reasoning, but that the social scientists beat them in verbal reasoning and analytical writing ability.

But perhaps most distressingly, the students pursuing graduate degrees in education-related fields, who presumably either teach or plan to teach children for a living, dominate the lowest performing half of the table for both verbal and quantitative reasoning skills.

That probably says quite a lot about the state of education in America today. Especially if we're relying upon people who are among the least capable of applying verbal and quantitative reasoning skills to teach those same skills to America's children.

Previously and Next on Political Calculations

We originally considered this topic in our post Ranking School Smarts by Major, our first look at the relative performance of students from different majors on standardized graduate school admission tests, which summarized 20 years worth of data spanning the years from 1962 through 1982. Comparing those older results with the results that we're presenting today reveals that not much has changed where the relative abilities of individuals entering education-related graduate programs in the nearly three decades since are concerned.

That's especially distressing given that public school systems and education schools have emphasized satisfying stronger credential requirements for teachers, especially to teach subjects like math and science.

If you follow the links in the paragraph above, you'll find that they all consider the state of education credentialing in California, which has had a very active program to increase the percentage of "fully credentialed" public school teachers in that state for well over a decade. Tomorrow, we'll look specifically at the state of mathematics education in California's secondary schools, as it relates to how well the state's increasingly "well credentialed" teachers are doing in preparing their students for the academic challenges they would face in attending college.

Labels: education, rankings

- posted by Ironman at 6:45 AM | Permalink | Home |

If you ran a state government, what would you do to be prepared for a major economic downturn in your state?

Believe it or not, most politicians and bureaucrats don't live in a total vacuum, despite recent evidence to the contrary. If they know that trouble lies ahead, they prepare for it.

Of course, that's mainly due to self-interest. Having risen to positions of power, many seek to continue in their positions for as long as possible. And part of that means having to cope with the downside to any less-than-desirable economic policies they may have when the economy can no longer support their follies.

For instance, the one thing that most threatens the ability of those in power to remain in power is whether the people who can vote them out of office have recently lost their jobs. If times are bad, and a politician or bureaucrat wishes to continue pursuing their wasteful or economically destructive policies to support their own personal gravy train, whether driven by ideological or corruption-based motives, then they have to compensate in such a way that makes it possible for them to survive the downturn.

The traditional solution that our power-hungry, ideologically-motivated and corruption-driven politicians and bureaucrats have come up with to deal with that problem often comes in three parts (stop us if it sounds all too familiar....):

1. Blame businesses or other scapegoats for the job losses.
   
2. Provide jobless benefits that:
   • Make some people "grateful" for what you've done for them.
   • Keep most people from getting so angry at you that they'll do whatever it takes run you out of power.
   •  
3. Increase the jobless benefits over time, especially if you plan to keep doing things that will continue hurting the job situation.

To pay for providing those jobless benefits, governments use Unemployment Insurance (UI) taxes. Here, businesses are required to pay a percentage of an employee's income to cover the cost of providing unemployment benefits, with the tax rate varying by occupation - employers in highly cyclical industries can expect to have to pay more than employers in less volatile industries, for example. In the United States, these taxes are applied at the state level.

It occurs to us that we can use average UI tax rates to get a sense of which states' politicians and bureaucrats expected that the conditions they created for economic growth in their states were such that they would have to deal with the consequences of significantly higher unemployment thanks to their insider knowledge of the likely effects of their economic policies.

Here, we would expect a state whose politicians and bureaucrats recognize that they've systematically disadvantaged themselves economically will very consciously set average unemployment insurance tax rates higher than they would otherwise so they can support higher levels of joblessness or higher levels of jobless benefits. Here, what they would set otherwise would be determined by the level of unemployment insurance benefits they would expect to pay out to support the kind of cyclical variations that would really be expected for their state's mix of jobs.

After all, if they really believed that their policies really promoted positive economic growth and job creation, they wouldn't need to set unemployment insurance taxes much higher than that level. Unless they know something to the contrary.

The chart below shows what we found when we looked at the most recent data for average unemployment insurance tax rates from 2009. We've made the interactive version of the map we generated, along with our dataset, publicly available through IBM's ManyEyes data visualization site:

As it happens, another ManyEyes user, crampell, created a map showing the seasonally-adjusted rate of unemployment for each state as of July 2009:

Already we can see some correlations between where we find high unemployment rates and where we find high unemployment insurance taxes.

But now, we'll create a job weakness index by multiplying the two rates together - the states with the highest index values would be those with the unique combination of both high UI taxes and high unemployment - or rather, where politicians and bureaucrats realized that they would have to support high unemployment with the highest unemployment insurance tax rates imposed on the state's dramatically reduced workforce (the interactive version is available here):

We find that Michigan, Rhode Island and Oregon round out the top three states where politicians most expected to have to deal with the high unemployment rates they eventually realized due to their poor economic policies.

The important thing to realize here is that these states UI tax rates were not set overnight - in most cases, they were set in place years ahead of when the unemployment they would be supporting arrived, confirming that the politicians in these three states were well aware of their relative economic weakness.

That they were also telegraphing that their economic policies would be unlikely to promote the kind of job growth it would take to genuinely turn their states economic situations around years in advance appears to have escaped their attention....

Labels: jobs, rankings, taxes

- posted by Ironman at 9:19 AM | Permalink | Home |

For no other reason that it's really popular, we've once again pitted the nations of the European Union against the individual United States to find out where they all rank with respect to each others Gross Domestic Product (GDP) adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), population and their corresponding 2006 GDP-PPP per Capita for 2006!

Best of all, we've put our data into the dynamic table you see below, which 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 the page in your web browser.

We'll have some more commentary below the table - in the meantime, you know you can't resist....

2006 GDP-PPP Rankings of EU Nations vs Individual US States

US State or EU Nation	2006 GDP-PPP (billions USD)	2006 Population	GDP-PPP per Capita (USD)
United States - All	13,149.0	296,398,484	44,362.69
US - Alabama	160.6	4,599,030	34,913.67
US - Alaska	41.1	670,053	61,345.89
US - Arizona	232.5	6,166,318	37,698.83
US - Arkansas	91.8	2,810,872	32,672.07
US - California	1,727.4	36,457,549	47,379.90
US - Colorado	230.5	4,753,377	48,487.21
US - Connecticut	204.1	3,504,809	58,243.97
US - Delaware	60.4	853,476	70,723.72
US - District of Columbia	87.7	581,530	150,747.17
US - Florida	713.5	18,089,888	39,442.20
US - Georgia	379.6	9,363,941	40,533.15
US - Hawaii	58.3	1,285,498	45,357.52
US - Idaho	49.9	1,466,465	34,032.18
US - Illinois	589.6	12,831,970	45,947.58
US - Indiana	248.9	6,313,520	39,425.71
US - Iowa	124.0	2,982,085	41,571.58
US - Kansas	111.7	2,764,075	40,410.99
US - Kentucky	146.0	4,206,074	34,701.96
US - Louisiana	193.1	4,287,768	45,043.95
US - Maine	47.0	1,321,574	35,543.22
US - Maryland	257.8	2,615,727	98,563.42
US - Massachusetts	337.6	6,437,193	52,440.56
US - Michigan	381.0	10,095,643	37,739.35
US - Minnesota	244.5	5,167,101	47,327.51
US - Mississippi	84.2	2,910,540	28,937.93
US - Missouri	225.9	5,842,713	38,659.44
US - Montana	32.3	944,632	34,216.50
US - Nebraska	75.7	1,768,331	42,808.73
US - Nevada	118.4	2,495,529	47,444.45
US - New Hampshire	56.3	1,314,895	42,798.85
US - New Jersey	453.2	8,724,560	51,942.68
US - New Mexico	75.9	1,954,599	38,836.61
US - New York	1,021.9	19,306,183	52,933.51
US - North Carolina	374.5	8,856,505	42,288.13
US - North Dakota	26.4	635,867	41,494.53
US - Ohio	461.3	11,478,006	40,190.08
US - Oklahoma	134.7	3,579,212	37,620.29
US - Oregon	151.3	3,700,758	40,883.79
US - Pennsylvania	510.3	12,440,621	41,018.29
US - Rhode Island	45.7	1,067,610	42,768.43
US - South Carolina	149.2	4,321,249	34,530.29
US - South Dakota	32.3	781,919	41,346.99
US - Tennessee	238.0	6,038,803	39,416.59
US - Texas	1,065.9	23,507,783	45,342.05
US - Utah	97.7	2,550,063	38,331.99
US - Vermont	24.2	623,908	38,808.61
US - Virginia	369.3	7,642,884	48,314.22
US - Washington	293.5	6,395,798	45,894.35
US - West Virginia	55.7	1,818,470	30,607.05
US - Wisconsin	227.2	5,556,506	40,894.40
US - Wyoming	29.6	515,004	57,399.55
European Union - All	13,349.1	487,293,413	27,394.34
EU - Austria	283.8	8,192,880	34,639.83
EU - Belgium	342.8	10,379,067	33,028.02
EU - Bulgaria	78.7	7,385,367	10,653.50
EU - Cyprus	22.6	784,301	28,789.97
EU - Czech Republic	224.0	10,235,455	21,884.71
EU - Denmark	201.5	5,450,661	36,967.99
EU - Estonia	26.9	1,324,333	20,274.36
EU - Finland	176.4	5,231,372	33,719.64
EU - France	1,891.0	60,876,136	31,063.08
EU - Germany	2,630.0	82,422,299	31,908.84
EU - Greece	256.3	10,688,058	23,980.03
EU - Hungary	175.2	9,981,334	17,552.76
EU - Ireland	180.7	4,062,235	44,482.90
EU - Italy	1,756.0	58,133,509	30,206.33
EU - Latvia	36.5	2,274,735	16,041.43
EU - Lithuania	54.9	3,585,906	15,309.94
EU - Luxembourg	33.9	474,413	71,393.49
EU - Malta	8.4	400,214	21,016.26
EU - Netherlands	529.1	16,491,461	32,083.27
EU - Poland	552.4	38,536,869	14,334.32
EU - Portugal	210.1	10,605,870	19,809.78
EU - Romania	202.2	22,303,552	9,065.82
EU - Slovakia	99.2	5,439,448	18,235.31
EU - Slovenia	47.0	2,010,347	23,384.02
EU - Spain	1,109.0	40,397,842	27,451.96
EU - Sweden	290.6	9,016,596	32,229.46
EU - United Kingdom	1,930.0	60,609,153	31,843.38

Sources and Acknowledgements:

• 2006 US State GDP Data: Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. Department of Commerce
• 2006 US State Population Estimates (July 1, 2006): US Census [Excel spreadsheet]
• 2006 EU Nation GDP-PPP Data: The World Factbook, 2007
• 2006 EU Nation Population Estimates (July 1, 2006): The World Factbook, 2006
• 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 2006 GDP figure by its population estimate as of July 1, 2006.

The Highest Ranking EU Nations

The highest ranking EU nation is Luxembourg, which ranks third overall in the measure of GDP-PPP per Capita. The next highest EU nation, Ireland, comes in at 19th place, just behind Louisiana and the US as a whole (if limited to just individual states, Ireland places a bit ahead of Nebraska).

Denmark, the next highest EU nation in the ranking by GDP-PPP per capita, comes in 45th place (omitting the US as a whole), just after Oklahoma and ahead of Maine. The next highest EU nation, Austria, would occupy the 49th highest position, sandwiched between Kentucky and South Carolina.

By the time we reach down to the 53rd position of the list, the EU nations begin turning up more regularly, with Finland and Belgium occupying the 53rd and 54th slots respectively, positioned between the US states of Idaho and Arkansas. Below Arkansas, we find a neat group of EU nations Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany, the United Kingdom and France before the US state of West Virginia turns up in the rankings in the 61st position.

EU member Italy turns up in the 62nd slot, driving ahead of the lowest ranked individual U.S. state of Mississippi.

Previously on Political Calculations

2006 Economic and Population Data

• Africa GDP Rankings for 2006
• Asia GDP Rankings for 2006
• 2006 GDP Rankings for the Americas
• 2006 GDP Rankings for Europe

2004 Economic and Population Data

• Pacific Rim: 2004 GDP Rankings
• GDP Rankings in Muslim Nations
• 2004 GDP Rankings for Asia
• European Union 2004 GDP Rankings
• GDP in Africa: 2004
• GDP Rankings of the Americas: 2004 Edition
• EU vs US: Two Years of Economic Data Later....

2002 Economic and Population Data

• EU vs USA
• Cool Tools and GSP
• GDP of the Americas
• GDP in the Muslim World
• GDP in Europe
• GDP: Africa
• GDP Along the Pacific Rim
• GDP in Asia
• GDP: And the rest...

Labels: gdp, rankings

- posted by Ironman at 1:00 PM | Permalink | Home |

Europe marks the fourth stop in our continuing series comparing the relative economic performance of the nations of the world with their nearest neighbors!

We've built a dynamic ranking table to show each of the nations' Gross Domestic Product (GDP) adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), 2006 population and their corresponding 2006 GDP-PPP per Capita. We've also determined each country's rate of growth since 2004 by finding the annualized rate of change in their GDP-PPP per Capita!

Once again, we find that the fastest growing nations in our survey all share a unique characteristic, which would seem to be a major factor helping spark their economic growth. We'll identify the Ten New Lions of Europe in our commentary below the table.

As with all our dynamic tables, you may sort the data by clicking on any of the 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 the page in your web browser.

2006 GDP-PPP for Europe

Country	July 2006 Est. Population	2006 Est. GDP-PPP	2006 GDP-PPP per Capita	% Change GDP-PPP per Capita, Since 2004
Albania	3,581,655	20,460,000,000	5,712.44	8.0%
Austria*	8,192,880	283,800,000,000	34,639.83	5.2%
Belarus	10,293,011	82,940,000,000	8,057.89	8.9%
Belgium*	10,379,067	342,800,000,000	33,028.02	4.0%
Bosnia and Herzegovina	4,498,976	25,280,000,000	5,619.06	-7.3%
Bulgaria*	7,385,367	78,680,000,000	10,653.50	14.0%
Croatia	4,494,749	60,260,000,000	13,406.76	9.4%
Cyprus*	784,301	22,580,000,000	28,789.97	5.0%
Czech Republic*	10,235,455	224,000,000,000	21,884.71	14.1%
Denmark*	5,450,661	201,500,000,000	36,967.99	7.1%
Estonia*	1,324,333	26,850,000,000	20,274.36	18.9%
Finland*	5,231,372	176,400,000,000	33,719.64	7.8%
France*	60,876,136	1,891,000,000,000	31,063.08	4.0%
Georgia	4,661,473	17,880,000,000	3,835.70	11.6%
Germany*	82,422,299	2,630,000,000,000	31,908.84	5.5%
Greece*	10,688,058	256,300,000,000	23,980.03	6.2%
Hungary*	9,981,334	175,200,000,000	17,552.76	8.6%
Iceland	299,388	11,380,000,000	38,010.88	9.2%
Ireland*	4,062,235	180,700,000,000	44,482.90	18.2%
Italy*	58,133,509	1,756,000,000,000	30,206.33	4.4%
Latvia*	2,274,735	36,490,000,000	16,041.43	18.1%
Lithuania*	3,585,906	54,900,000,000	15,309.94	10.5%
Luxembourg*	474,413	33,870,000,000	71,393.49	10.1%
Macedonia	2,050,554	16,940,000,000	8,261.18	7.9%
Malta*	400,214	8,411,000,000	21,016.26	7.5%
Moldova	4,466,706	9,070,000,000	2,030.58	3.4%
Netherlands*	16,491,461	529,100,000,000	32,083.27	4.3%
Norway	4,610,820	213,600,000,000	46,325.82	7.6%
Poland*	38,536,869	552,400,000,000	14,334.32	9.4%
Portugal*	10,605,870	210,100,000,000	19,809.78	5.1%
Romania*	22,303,552	202,200,000,000	9,065.82	8.5%
Slovakia*	5,439,448	99,190,000,000	18,235.31	12.0%
Slovenia*	2,010,347	47,010,000,000	23,384.02	9.2%
Spain*	40,397,842	1,109,000,000,000	27,451.96	8.6%
Sweden*	9,016,596	290,600,000,000	32,229.46	6.5%
Switzerland	7,523,934	255,500,000,000	33,958.30	0.2%
Ukraine	46,710,816	364,300,000,000	7,799.05	11.3%
United Kingdom*	60,609,153	1,930,000,000,000	31,843.38	3.8%
European Union*	456,953,258	13,060,000,000,000	28,580.60	5.8%
Europe (All)	580,485,495	14,426,691,000,000	24,852.80	6.0%

The Ten New Lions of Europe

Assuming you've sorted the table above to make it easy, you've found that the European nations with double-digit rates of growth over the years from 2004 to 2006 are Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Slovakia, and Ukraine. What makes these nations stand out in comparison to their neighbors, or rather, nine of them, is their tax systems and increasing levels of international trade.

Low, or Flat, Taxes

Six of the fastest growing European nations have established flat tax rates for individuals (Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Ukraine). On the corporate side, Ireland has established the lowest corporate tax rate in all of Europe, drawing substantial international investment.

Meanwhile, Luxembourg is considered to be a tax haven and benefits greatly from its much lower taxes compared to those of its neighboring countries.

Trade

Bulgaria and the Czech Republic round out the top ten nations of Europe, and both have benefited greatly by greater ties to international markets since their days under the control of the Soviet empire. Both have increased their economic ties with the European Union, with Bulgaria becoming part of the EU in January 2007.

Sources and Acknowledgements:

• 2006 GDP-PPP Data: The World Factbook, 2007
• July, 2006 Population Estimate: The World Factbook, 2006 via Bartleby.
• Table Sorting Function: The Daily Kryogenix.

Previously on Political Calculations

2006 Economic and Population Data

• Africa GDP Rankings for 2006
• Asia GDP Rankings for 2006
• 2006 GDP Rankings for the Americas

2004 Economic and Population Data

• Pacific Rim: 2004 GDP Rankings
• GDP Rankings in Muslim Nations
• 2004 GDP Rankings for Asia
• European Union 2004 GDP Rankings
• GDP in Africa: 2004
• GDP Rankings of the Americas: 2004 Edition
• EU vs US: Two Years of Economic Data Later....

2002 Economic and Population Data

• EU vs USA
• Cool Tools and GSP
• GDP of the Americas
• GDP in the Muslim World
• GDP in Europe
• GDP: Africa
• GDP Along the Pacific Rim
• GDP in Asia
• GDP: And the rest...

Labels: gdp, rankings

- posted by Ironman at 12:26 PM | Permalink | Home |

The third stop in our continuing series comparing the relative economic performance of the nations of the world brings us to the entire Western Hemisphere!

As in previous weeks, we've once again provided a dynamic ranking table to show each of the countries' Gross Domestic Product (GDP) adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), their population and GDP-PPP per Capita for 2006. We've also determined each country's annualized rate of growth of their GDP-PPP per capita since 2004.

As we've seen in our rankings from previous weeks, the fastest growing nations in our survey all share a unique economic characteristic, or rather, they share one particular industry that has seen major growth as a major component of their economies. Unlike previous weeks though, it's not the oil industry - we'll have the answer to which industry it is below the table.

Speaking of which, you may sort the data in our dynamic table below by clicking any of the column headings. Doing so will 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 the page in your web browser.

2006 GDP-PPP for the Americas

Country	Population	GDP-PPP	GDP-PPP per Capita	Pop. Est. Date	GDP Est. Date	% Change GDP-PPP per Capita, Since 2004
Antigua and Barbuda	69,108	1,145,000,000	16,568.27	July 2006 est.	2006 est.	22.9%
Argentina	39,921,833	608,800,000,000	15,249.8	July 2006 est.	2006 est.	11.1%
Aruba	103,484	2,396,000,000	23,153.34	July 2006 est.	2006 est. [2]	3.1%
Bahamas, The	303,770	6,556,000,000	21,582.12	July 2006 est.	2006 est.	10.5%
Barbados	279,912	5,146,000,000	18,384.35	July 2006 est.	2006 est.	5.8%
Belize	287,730	2,307,000,000	8,017.93	July 2006 est.	2006 est.	10.9%
Bolivia	8,989,046	27,870,000,000	3,100.44	July 2006 est.	2006 est.	10.1%
Brazil	188,078,227	1,655,000,000,000	8,799.53	July 2006 est.	2006 est.	4.2%
British Virgin Islands	23,098	1,008,000,000	43,640.14	July 2006 est.	2006 est. [2]	6.5%
Canada	33,098,932	1,178,000,000,000	35,590.27	July 2006 est.	2006 est.	6.3%
Cayman Islands	45,436	2,472,000,000	54,406.2	July 2006 est.	2006 est. [2]	11.5%
Chile	16,134,219	202,700,000,000	12,563.36	July 2006 est.	2006 est.	8.4%
Colombia	43,593,035	374,400,000,000	8,588.53	July 2006 est.	2006 est.	13.7%
Costa Rica	4,075,261	50,890,000,000	12,487.54	July 2006 est.	2006 est.	14.1%
Cuba	11,382,820	45,510,000,000	3,998.13	July 2006 est.	2006 est.	15.5%
Dominica	71,727	485,000,000	6,761.75	July 2006 est.	2006 est. [1]	10.4%
Dominican Republic	9,183,984	77,090,000,000	8,393.96	July 2006 est.	2006 est.	15.4%
Ecuador	13,547,510	61,520,000,000	4,541.06	July 2006 est.	2006 est.	10.1%
El Salvador	6,822,378	33,680,000,000	4,936.7	July 2006 est.	2006 est.	.3%
Grenada	89,703	982,000,000	10,947.24	July 2006 est.	2006 est.	49.1%
Guatemala	12,293,545	61,380,000,000	4,992.86	July 2006 est.	2006 est.	9.5%
Guyana	767,245	3,711,000,000	4,836.79	July 2006 est.	2006 est.	8.5%
Haiti	8,308,504	14,790,000,000	1,780.1	July 2006 est.	2006 est.	6.3%
Jamaica	2,758,124	12,820,000,000	4,648.09	July 2006 est.	2006 est.	6.4%
Mexico	107,449,525	1,149,000,000,000	10,693.39	July 2006 est.	2006 est.	5.6%
Netherlands Antilles	221,736	3,400,000,000	15,333.55	July 2006 est.	2006 est. [2]	16.8%
Nicaragua	5,570,129	17,330,000,000	3,111.24	July 2006 est.	2006 est.	16.3%
Panama	3,191,319	26,040,000,000	8,159.64	July 2006 est.	2006 est.	9.1%
Paraguay	6,506,464	31,260,000,000	4,804.45	July 2006 est.	2006 est.	-.3%
Peru	28,302,603	186,600,000,000	6,593.03	July 2006 est.	2006 est.	8.1%
Puerto Rico	3,927,188	75,820,000,000	19,306.44	July 2006 est.	2006 est.	7.2%
Puerto Rico	3,927,188	75,820,000,000	19,306.44	July 2006 est.	2006 est.	7.2%
Saint Kitts and Nevis	39,129	726,000,000	18,554.01	July 2007 est.	2006 est.	45.8%
Saint Lucia	168,458	1,179,000,000	6,998.78	July 2006 est.	2006 est.	15.2%
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	117,848	864,000,000	7,331.48	July 2006 est.	2006 est.	58.5%
Suriname	439,117	3,136,000,000	7,141.6	July 2006 est.	2006 est.	28.7%
Trinidad and Tobago	1,065,842	21,120,000,000	19,815.32	July 2006 est.	2006 est.	37.6%
United States	298,444,215	13,130,000,000,000	43,994.82	July 2006 est.	2006 est.	4.7%
Uruguay	3,431,932	37,540,000,000	10,938.45	July 2006 est.	2006 est.	11.2%
Venezuela	25,730,435	186,300,000,000	7,240.45	July 2006 est.	2006 est.	11.7%
The Americas (All)	884,834,571	19,300,973,000,000	21,813.09	July 2006	2006	5.7%

Caribbean Dreams

The big winners in growing their GDP-PPP per capita were many of the island nations of the Caribbean. While GDP-PPP figure is nearly double the previous year's figure with no good explanation, it's clear that the Caribbean was the place to be to realize rapid growth in the Western Hemisphere from 2004 to 2006.

The biggest clear winner would seem to be the island nation of Grenada. Here, the rebound of the island's tourism and agriculture industries following the destruction of Hurricane Ivan in 2004 helped seal a strong annualized rate of growth of 49.1% in GDP-PPP per capita over the two years since.

The next big winner would seem to be Saint Kitts and Nevis. Here, although we see the second greatest increase in GDP-PPP per capita in the western hemisphere, this result is partly an artifact of combination of the nation's decline in population and the revival of the tourism industry across the Caribbean from 2004 to 2006.

Here, the nation's population loss was in large part driven by its government's move to shut down its money-losing state-run sugar production operations in 2005, which resulted in an out-migration from the island. While this was happening however, the nation benefitted from the revival of tourism following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack against the United States, which greatly impacted this industry throughout the Caribbean. Strong tourism growth combined with a smaller population helps account for the nation's blistering 45.8% rate of GDP-PPP growth per capita.

Number three on the rapid growth rate scale is the nation of Trinidad and Tobago. Here, increased tourism combined with revenues from the island's oil refining and production operations, which benefitted from increasing world prices for oil and gasoline, helped deliver remarkable GDP-PPP per capita growth from 2004 to 2006.

Moving to the continents of North and South America, we find solid growth from Canada down through Chile, with some really impressive growth in Suriname, which has benefitted from higher world commodity prices for its large mining industry.

Sources and Acknowledgements:

• 2006 GDP-PPP Data: The World Factbook, 2007 - Primary Source
• 2006 GDP-PPP Data [1]: International Monetary Fund
• 2006 GDP-PPP Data [2]: Economist Intelligence Unit
• July, 2006 Population Estimate: The World Factbook, 2006 via Bartleby.
• Table Sorting Function: The Daily Kryogenix.

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Labels: gdp, rankings

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