It’s interesting to see these top countries exchanged ranks and some grew dramatically over the last 40 years (1966 to 2017) in a dynamic chart. It’s also interesting to think about the background/reasons for those changes. For example, for China, one can see the dramatic drop during the cultural revolution years, and after 1989, but maintained a steady and dramatic gain since 2000. The 2nd video shows the top 20’s in 2018. However, there are so many different approaches – income, expenditure, production (see this for elaboration) benchmarks on GDP ranking (bases include PPP, per capital, etc), below are just a few representations.
Below is one on the 2018 scenario – note that these are GDP comparisons using PPP, which are arguably more useful than those using nominal GDP. PPP takes into account the relative cost of local goods, services and inflation rates of the country, rather than using international market exchange rates which may distort the real differences in per capita income.
Based on this benchmark, the top 3 ranks are – China- top at US$25,176 Billions, US – 2nd at US$20,351 Billions, and India- 3rd at US$10.447 Billions.
But of course, if you look at GDP per capita, it’s an entirely different story. See below for Top 10 in 2018.
Credits and sources
Gross domestic product. (2018). En.wikipedia.org. Retrieved 4 November 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_domestic_product
List of countries by GDP (nominal) per capita. (2018). En.wikipedia.org. Retrieved 4 November 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita
World GDP by country.. (2018). YouTube. Retrieved 4 November 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZoBTjLnWYM
Top 20 Economies 2018 by GDP (PPP). (2018). YouTube. Retrieved 4 November 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGE-8yt5sgo