World's Biggest Economies in Terms of Value

Overview:

The United States is the largest economy in the world with GDP at $20412.87 billion, which shows the US economy increased from around $19390.60 billion last year. China follows, with $14092.51 billion, which is an increase of more than $2078 billion in comparison to 2017. Japan is in third place with an economy of $5167.05 billion, up from $294.91 billion from previous year. Three European countries take up the next places on the list: Germany is fourth, with a $4211.64 billion economy, the United Kingdom is fifth with $2936.29 billion and France is sixth with $2925 billion. Close behind the UK and France, India’s economy is at seventh position with $2848.23 billion, and Italy is in eighth with an economy of $2181.97 billion. Ninth on the list is Brazil, with an economy of more than $2138.92 billion, while Canada is 10th with a $1798.51 billion economy.

The US economy is larger than the combined economies of Germany, UK, France, India, Italy, Brazil and Canada. Overall, the global economy is worth of $87504.56 billion, which means US economy’s share is 23.33% of the World economy. US economy roughly covers one fourth of the World economy.

India is on path to become world’s 5^th Largest Economy:

India is on track to overtake the United Kingdom to become the world's fifth largest economy in 2019, according to data and forecasts from the IMF. Both the US and China are multi-trillion dollar economies whereas India is now a $2848 billion economy. India will take time to reach in multi trillion economy category, whereas the gap between UK's economy and Indian economy is narrow (UK’s economy is greater by US$88 billion in 2018). Although there is huge gap between per capita income of these countries. In the post financial-crisis period of 2010-2017, UK’s economy has grown approx. 2 percent on average. At the same time India’s economy has grown approx. at 7 percent on average. If both the economies growing at the same pace, India will overtake UK in 2019.

Role of demographics in growth:

In the long term, India has objective to achieve and maintain high growth with high per capita income. Fertility reduction, India’s stubbornly high fertility rate stands at 2.33 children per woman (Source: World Bank) among the highest outside Africa and Middle East, creates demographic dividends and opportunities for economic growth. Fertility reduction would also help to improve infant mortality rate and maternal mortality rate. Lower fertility could induce higher participation rate particularly for women and decline in youth dependency rate may further leads to increased investment in education and health of each child. As Asian countries like China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have discovered in the last century, fertility reduction opens a demographic window for growth because it gives a country whole generations of adults who can go to work instead of staying home to take care of multiple children. India also needs to follow its Asian counterparts and to adopt right policies to reduce fertility rate, rather to stopping women from having more children and forcing sterilization should encourage young people for delay marriage and focus on careers. This will have dual impact, first when young people are economically active, they tend to wait to have children and have fewer when they have. Second when they focus on career it leads to more contribution to the economy.