High income countries

 

GNI per capita explained

GNI per capita is essentially a measure of a nation's total income divided by the number of people in that country. A country's overall gross national income (GNI) is very similar to gross national product (GNP), an older metric GNI has largely replaced. GNI is calculated by starting with a country's gross domestic product (GDP), then adding money its citizens and businesses have brought in from other countries and subtracting money taken out of the economy by businesses and investors based in other countries. Once a country's GNI has been calculated, it is divided by that country's population to determine its GNI per capita. GNI offers little insight into a country's income inequality but is nonetheless considered one of the most important at-a-glance assessments of a country's economic health.

The relationship between income and development

While World Bank classifies countries by income, the United Nations groups countries by their level of overall development. There is, however, a high degree of correlation between the two systems, as development often runs parallel to income. As a rule, countries classified as high income by World Bank correspond to those deemed developed countries by the United Nations. Upper-middle- and lower-middle-income countries roughly correspond to the United Nations' developing countries, and World Bank's low-income countries list includes many of what the United Nations would consider the least-developed or (less commonly) underdeveloped countries.

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