Income per capita, or gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, is the most frequently used statistic for comparing economic well-being across countries. Income per capita measures the value of things exchanged in the marketplace. While high performance in this category does not guarantee a high quality of life, a country that is not generating enough income is hampered in what it can do on the environmental and social fronts. The indicator is a per capita measure, because a country’s total income may rise as its population increases, even though there may have been no improvement in the income level of the average citizen. To compare per capita income, the indicator is also adjusted to remove the effects of price changes. Many economists have pointed out the shortcomings of income per capita as a measure of well-being. For example, income per capita actually rises as crime rises if the country spends more money to fight that rising crime—on a larger police force or improved intelligence technologies. Indeed, among Canada’s 17 peer countries, the U.S. has the second-highest level of income per capita but also the highest rate of poverty, the highest homicide rate, and the lowest life expectancy. Several adjusted-GDP indicators are now being developed to try to account for the social or environmental aspects not captured in GDP calculations. http://sso.conferenceboard.ca/HCP/Details/Economy/income-per-capita.aspx Do other countries have an income gap with the United States? Yes. While Belgium, France, Ireland, Netherlands, and Norway had higher labour productivity levels than the United States in 2006, only Norway—with its huge oil and gas revenues—was able to convert this into higher income per capita than in the United States.&n ...