Which country has the highest per capita income in the world according to common measures?

• A. Luxembourg
• B. Norway
• C. Singapore
• D. Qatar

Answer: (D)

Per-capita income measures how much, on average, each person in a country would earn if the total income were divided equally among the people. The most common way this is shown is GDP per capita in nominal terms, which is the country’s total economic output divided by its population.

Luxembourg tends to have the highest figure in these standard nominal measures because it has a very high-output economy for its small population—strong financial services, high wages, and a compact, highly productive economy all push its output per person to the top. Qatar is very wealthy per person as well thanks to energy exports, but in nominal GDP per capita it’s usually not higher than Luxembourg. Singapore and Norway are also among the wealthy countries, yet Luxembourg often leads in this particular metric.

So, in common per-capita income rankings, Luxembourg is typically at the top, with other high-income countries close behind depending on the exact measure and year.