World Development Metrics

first posted: 2025-06-19 09:22:00.792990

Governance: Debt vs GDP growth and Debt GDP ratio

Countries in red corespond to those whose debt grows faster than GDP over last 20y. Warning: China Debt growth numbers looks higher than GDP growth but are subject to estimation.

The following shows countries that accumulated high debt:

Taxes: Personal Income Tax and Capital Gains Tax

Low Personal Income Tax is an indicia of liberal economy, and good management if debt is not too high. OECD (according to some a bad governance cartel)

Low Capital Gains Tax is an indicia of fiscal rules that take into account the fact that capital formation is risky.

Demographic Metrics

Homicide rate is an indicia of social development and possibility of extreme violence.

Infant mortality is an indicia of social cohesion and healthcare quality

Acces to Internet is an indicia of infrastructure investment and population litteracy

Fertility is an indicia of urbanisation

Life expectancy is highly correlated to infant mortality, and lifestyle

Litteracy is an indicia of severe underdevelopment

IQ is a controversial / hard to measure metric. It links to the potential for development

University educated is a development indicator

20 year Economic Growth: long term USD nominal growth

Here is the 20y average growth of GDP per capita. It can be used as indicator of development:

China, SE Asia, Central Asia have high growth in the 7% to 12% range
Latam: Mexico, Brazil, Argentina stagnant, high growth in Uruguay, Panama and Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru above 6%
Eastern Europe: 6%+ growth as it converges to western
Africa: South Africa stagnant, Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria have 6% growth

GDP growth is GDP per capita growth + population growth. Countries with positive demographics have additional economic growth coming from the demographic dividend.

Here is the current GDP per capita levels:

We show past GDP level, which can be computed using current GDP and removing last 20y growth for reference:

Future GDP is estimated using current GDP and assuming future growth is past 20y growth. This assumption is very generous for emerging countries, for instance, China, Thailand, Eastern Europe growth has already started to slow down. Similarly, frontier countries might pass the development threshold and experience higher growth.

10 year Economic Growth: GDP Evolution slow down?

While growth was high for emerging markets in the past 20 years. We see much less growth in the last 10 years.