Despite Pandemic, Israel Joins World’s Top 20 GDP Per Capita

Latest data shows that Israel has entered the prestigious top 20 club of nations with the world’s highest GDP per capita.

By Yakir Benzion, United With Israel

The latest data compiled by the Israeli edition of one of the world’s leading business magazines, Forbes, shows that Israel is in 19th place in the world based on GDP per capita, the magazine reported recently.

Led by Luxembourg, which ranks first with a whopping $116,021 per capita, Israel is up there with the best, including the US in 6th place with $63,416 per capita, Singapore in 8th at $58,902, and Qatar – the only Arab country in the top 20 – in 11th place at $52,144.

The rankings are based on data from the International Monetary Fund data that shows Israel with a GDP per capita of $43,689 for 2020, ahead of the next five prestigious countries in the list: Canada, New Zealand, Britain, Japan and France.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is defined as the dollar equivalent of the market value of all the final goods and services produced by a country in a given year. While it doesn’t directly factor in things like inflation or the cost of living, it is used to give a picture of how well a country’s economy is doing.

“Small, rich countries and more developed industrial countries tend to have the highest per capita GDP,” Forbes noted, adding that the move to 19th place is an improvement over Israel’s 2019 ranking of 21st and a jump from its 32nd place a decade ago in 2010 when Israel wasn’t even in the top 30 leading economies.

But Forbes also noted that along with the encouraging data, Israelis don’t feel so rich.

“The problem of the cost of living in Israel has not been solved in recent years and has even been exacerbated – so that Israel is still considered one of the most expensive countries in the world,” the report said, with the OECD noting that prices in Israel today are about 25% higher than the average of all the countries in the organization.

Thus, while in terms of per capita income Israel is in 19th place, which is very respectable, in terms of the actual purchasing power of consumers Israel is ranked only 35th in the world.