Income per person

How rich a country is sets what it can spend on police, courts or a regulated market. The World Bank measures income as everything a country produces in a year per person, at prices that make a dollar buy the same everywhere.^[1] In 2025 Singapore, Ireland and Luxembourg are richest, at over $125,000 a person, and Burundi, the Central African Republic and Somalia poorest, near $1,000; the median is about $17,000.

The chart of what goes with it sets income and other development indicators beside each score. Income does not decide the law: Singapore is rich and among the harshest, while Uruguay, far poorer, was the first country to legalise, in 2013. Where cannabis is a cash crop for poor farmers, each profile’s black market section says so.