Major differences exist in the quality of both GDP and population data between countries. When GDP and population data of poor quality are combined to produce GDP per capita data the accuracy of the resulting ratio is further diminished.
World Economics measures variation in the quality of both GDP and population data, by the GDP Data Quality Ratings (GDP DQR) and the Population Data Quality Ratings (PDQR) respectively and employs both scores to assess the overall accuracy of GDP per capita data. In most cases, because of out of date base years, a lack of resources in national statistics offices and a large unrecorded informal economy, official GDP figures are underestimates of actual economic activity, although in some rarer cases GDP may be overestimated as a result of government interference.
World Economics has graded South Africa's GDP data as grade B. Population data produced by South Africa has been graded as C. When these two grades are combined, South Africa as been judged to have an overall GDP Per Capita Data Quality Grade of B - Good
South Africa's data is highlighted in the table below, use the filter and sort order options to allow easy comparison with other countries.
Data source: World Economics Research, London