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Gross national income (GNI) per capita

In constant international-$ – World Bank
See all data and research on:
Economic Growth

What you should know about this indicator

  • Gross national income (GNI) is a measure of the total income earned by residents of a country or region each year. It is calculated as GDP plus net income received from abroad, plus taxes (minus subsidies) on production. GNI per capita is GNI divided by population.
  • This GNI per capita indicator provides information on economic growth and income levels from 1990.
  • This data is adjusted for inflation and for differences in living costs between countries.
  • This data is expressed in at 2021 prices.
Learn more in the FAQs

GNI per capita based on purchasing power parity (PPP). PPP GNI is gross national income (GNI) converted to international dollars using purchasing power parity rates. An international dollar has the same purchasing power over GNI as a U.S. dollar has in the United States. GNI is the sum of value added by all resident producers plus any product taxes (less subsidies) not included in the valuation of output plus net receipts of primary income (compensation of employees and property income) from abroad. Data are in constant 2021 international dollars.

Statistical concept and methodology: For the concept and methodology of PPP, please refer to the International Comparison Program (ICP)’s website (https://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/icp).

Gross national income (GNI) per capita
In constant international-$ – World Bank
Average income per person earned by residents of a country or region, including income earned abroad. This data is adjusted for inflation and for differences in living costs between countries.
Source
Data compiled from multiple sources by World Bank (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
January 24, 2025
Next expected update
January 2026
Date range
1990–2023
Unit
international-$ in 2021 prices

Explore charts that include this data

GNI per capita vs. GDP per capita

Frequently Asked Questions

What are international-$ and why are they used to measure incomes?

Much of the economic data we use to understand the world — for instance, on the goods and services bought or produced by households, firms and governments, or the incomes they receive — is initially recorded in terms of the units in which these transactions took place. That means this data starts out being expressed in a variety of local currencies — such as rupees, US dollars, or yuan, etc. — and without adjusting for inflation over time. This is known as being in “current prices”, or in “nominal” terms.

Before these figures can be meaningfully compared, they need to be converted into common units.

International dollars (int.-$) are a hypothetical currency that is used for this. It is the result of adjusting both for inflation within countries over time and for differences in the cost of living between countries.

The goal of international-$ is to provide a unit whose purchasing power is held fixed over time and across countries, such that one int.-$ can buy the same quantity and quality of goods and services no matter where or when it is spent.

The price level in the US is used as the benchmark so that one 2021 int.-$ is defined as the value of goods and services that one US dollar would buy in the US in 2021. Similarly, one 2011 int.-$ is defined as the value of goods and services that one US dollar would buy in the US in 2011.

The year 2021 (or any other benchmark year) indicates two things related to the two adjustments mentioned. Firstly, it tells us the base year used for the inflation adjustment within countries. This is the year whose prices are chosen to be the benchmark. If prices are higher than in this benchmark year, nominal data will be adjusted downwards. If prices are lower, it will be adjusted upwards. In the base year itself, the nominal and inflation-adjusted figures are the same by definition.

Secondly, 2021 (or any other benchmark year) indicates the year in which the differences in the cost of living between countries were assessed.

Purchasing Power Parity rates

Converting data in local currencies to international-$ means dividing the figures by a set of “exchange” rates, known as Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) rates. Unlike the exchange rates between currencies you would see at the foreign exchange counter, these account for differences in the cost of living between countries.

If you have ever shopped or eaten in a restaurant abroad, you may have noticed a country as a particularly expensive or cheap place to live. A given amount of your own currency, when exchanged for another country’s currency, may buy you considerably more or less there than it would have done at home.

The goal of PPP rates is to account for these price differences. They express, for each country, the amount of local currency that is needed to buy the same goods and services there as one US dollar buys in the US.

You can read more about this in our article What are PPP adjustments and why do we need them?

The “rounds” of the International Comparison Program

The calculation of PPP rates is the task of the International Comparison Program (ICP), which gathers data on the prices of thousands of goods and services in each country in a particular year.

The ICP does not calculate PPP rates every year but rather conducts its work in “rounds” that are several years apart. The most recent round was conducted in 2021, and the previous two rounds were conducted in 2011 and 2017.

In converting economic data to international-$, which round of PPPs are used to adjust for living costs differences between countries is, in principle, a separate issue from the base year used to adjust for inflation over time. By convention, however, the same year tends to be chosen for both. When converted to 2021 international-$, nominal local currencies are first adjusted for inflation to local 2021 prices, and are then adjusted to US prices using the PPPs calculated in the ICP’s 2021 round. Likewise, 2011 international-$ adjust for inflation using 2011 local prices and then use the 2011 PPPs to adjust for differences in living costs.

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

The World Development Indicators (WDI) is the primary World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially-recognized international sources. It presents the most current and accurate global development data available, and includes national, regional and global estimates.

Retrieved on
January 24, 2025
Retrieved from
https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/search/dataset/0037712/World-Development-Indicators
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
World Development Indicators (WDI), The World Bank (2025).

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

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  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
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Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Gross national income (GNI) per capita”, part of the following publication: Max Roser, Pablo Arriagada, Joe Hasell, Hannah Ritchie and Esteban Ortiz-Ospina (2023) - “Economic Growth”. Data adapted from Data compiled from multiple sources by World Bank. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gross-national-income-per-capita-worldbank [online resource]
How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Data compiled from multiple sources by World Bank (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

Data compiled from multiple sources by World Bank (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “Gross national income (GNI) per capita – World Bank – In constant international-$” [dataset]. Data compiled from multiple sources by World Bank, “World Development Indicators” [original data]. Retrieved February 16, 2025 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gross-national-income-per-capita-worldbank