Per Capita Calculator

How to Calculate Per Capita

Per capita is a way of simplifying and normalizing data so it is able to be evenly compared and discussed with greater understanding. The way you calculate this is with two variables:

1. Amount - This is the number itself. If we use the example above of vacancies this would be the number of vacant houses in your specific situation


2. Total group size - This is the highest possible number of the amount. If we continue with the above example, the city we are analyzing has a total of 45,000 houses so that would be the number entered into this field. If it only was a city of 5,000 houses that would be entered. This number can be a dollar amount, plain number, or whatever fits you specific situation.

Once you have the values for your scenario you can use the following formula to calculate the per capita value:

Understanding Your Results

When you use this tool you will get a single value that is a plain number which can be a decimal number as well. This represents the "per unit" or "per person" value which can give people a better understanding of an issue or topic.

Per capita is most often used when trying to compare two different values but those scenarios do not have an equal number of total units. For example, if you wanted to compare the total income of two cities where one has 5,000,000 people and the other only has 1,000,000 people, without using per capita it would be clear that the greater population city would generate way more money. But with per capita, we may be able to find that despite generating less money, the smaller city's population may effectively generate more income per person. This can broaden the understanding and tell us more information about a scenario.

How to Use the Per Capita Tool

If you want to find the per capita value of a certain stat you can use this tool to do so. Simply follow these steps:

1. Enter the specific number of the thing you are analyzing (ex. 500 vacant houses in a city).


2. Enter the total number possible of the appropriate variable (ex. 5,000 total homes in the city).


3. Hit the calculate button and get your answer instantly!

Calculation Example

If we want to get a better understanding of the economic productivity of the USA compared to another country, let's say India, we can get the GDP per capita to get a proper comparison due to the striking difference in populations. We can start with the USA. We know the recent GDP was 21 trillion so we will enter that into the amount field and then we will enter the total population, 330 million, in the second field. We can now hit calculate and we get a GDP per capita of $63,636,36. This means on average each US citizen contributes about $63,363 to the country's GDP.

Since we are comparing the economic output of the USA and India we now need to find the GDP per capita of India. With a GDP of about 3.94 trillion USD we can enter that value into the amount field, then we will enter their population, 1.458 billion, into the second field. We can now hit calculate and get an answer of $2,702.50. This outlines a stark difference in the economic output attributed to each citizen and can now be a better set of numbers to work with in a discussion about GDP output of each nation.