Per Capita Income

Per Capita Income (PCI) divides a country's total national income by its population, giving a rough average of income per person:

PCI is widely quoted because it adjusts for population size, allowing rough comparisons between countries of very different sizes, and its growth over time is often used as a proxy for a country's economic progress.

However, PCI is only an average, and averages hide distribution. A country where PCI has risen sharply could still have most of that rise concentrated among a small share of the population, with the majority seeing little improvement — which is why Economics textbooks pair PCI with measures of inequality (such as the Gini coefficient) and broader welfare indicators like the Human Development Index (HDI) rather than relying on PCI alone. PCI also says nothing …