The gross domestic productper capita figures on this page are derived from PPP calculations. Such calculations are prepared by various organizations, including the IMF and the World Bank. As estimates and assumptions have to be made, the results produced by different organizations for the same country are not hard facts and tend to differ, sometimes substantially, so they should be used with caution. Comparisons of national wealth are frequently made on the basis of nominal GDP and savings, which do not reflect differences in the cost of living in different countries ; hence, using a PPP basis is arguably more useful when comparing differences in living standards between nations because PPP takes into account the relative cost of living and the inflation rates of the countries, rather than using only exchange rates, which may distort the real differences in income. This is why GDP per capita is often considered one of the indicators of a country's standard of living, although this can be problematic because GDP per capita is not a measure of personal income.
All figures are in current international dollars, and rounded up or down to the nearest whole number. Several economies that are not considered to be sovereign states are included because they appear in the sources. These non-sovereign entities, former countries and other special groupings are in italics. They are listed in dollar order, but are not given a numerical rank.
There are many natural economic reasons for GDP-per-capita to vary between jurisdictions. However, it is increasingly being recognized that tax havens, or corporate tax havens, have distorted economic data which produces artificially high, or inflated, GDP-per-capita figures. It is estimated that over 15% of global jurisdictions are tax havens. An IMF investigation estimates that circa 40% of global FDI flows, which heavily influence the GDP of various jurisdictions, are described as "phantom" transactions. In 2017, Ireland's economic data became so distorted by U.S. multinational tax avoidance strategies, also known as BEPS actions, that Ireland effectively abandoned GDP statistics as credible measures of its economy, and created a replacement statistic called modified gross national income. Ireland is one of the world's largest corporate tax havens. A list of the top 15 GDP-per-capita countries from 2016–2017, contains most of the major global tax havens :
