Random Mode Keyboard shortcut: Command/Ctrl + Shift + R
thumbnail

Largest Economies in 2050

Name the countries which are projected to have the largest economies in 2050.
According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, February 2015
All data in billions of US$ - purchasing power parity
Quiz by relessness
Rate:
Last updated: December 22, 2019
You have not attempted this quiz yet.
First submittedDecember 19, 2012
Times taken87,558
Average score90.0%
Rating4.90
4:00
Enter answer here
0
 / 20 guessed
The quiz is paused. You have remaining.
Scoring
You scored / = %
This beats or equals % of test takers also scored 100%
The average score is
Your high score is
Your fastest time is
Keep scrolling down for answers and more stats ...
GDP
Country
53,553
China
41,384
United States
27,937
India
8,742
Indonesia
8,534
Brazil
7,914
Japan
7,087
Mexico
GDP
Country
6,610
Russia
6,354
Nigeria
6,338
Germany
5,744
United Kingdom
5,207
France
4,481
Saudi Arabia
4,354
Turkey
GDP
Country
4,142
South Korea
3,617
Italy
3,583
Canada
3,099
Spain
2,903
Australia
2,896
Egypt
+51
Level 82
Mar 6, 2013
Very interesting quiz, and it's always fun to project into the future but also notoriously inaccurate. The top 3 spots are interesting. Of course the USA currently dwarfs everyone else but they are busy right now dismantling everything that made them so and have been hard at work at that ever since Reagan. Everyone predicts China will keep growing as they are but I'm very skeptical- not because of their politics but actually because of their one-child policy which presents a unique and enormous demographic problem to an emerging capitalist country. India's growth I see as more sustainable but they're also less politically stable. I also would not be surprised to see some countries like Thailand, The Philippines, or Bangladesh crack the top 20 by 2050. They have the potential to. Saudi Arabia's economy depends almost 100% on oil so of course these projections depend on continued reliance on (and supply of) fossil fuels which may or may not be the case so far down the road.
+9
Level 50
Apr 22, 2013
I completely agree with you. I typed the three (Thailand, The Philippines, and Bangladesh, though I doubted the last) because I believed they would somehow manage to take place in the top 20.
+10
Level 61
Jun 30, 2016
Thailand: possibly, but they have heavy political unstability.

Pakistan: no - they have way too many internal discord - considering that their north-west frontier province is actually a part of the Pashtun homeland that was torn apart during colonial times and that their western province of Baluchistan is also splitting the Baluchis (an Irani people) between Pakistan and Iran. I don't expect to see Pakistan survive until 2050 -- more likely a union between SIndh and West Punjab will survive.

Bangladesh - great potential, but we need to see. Right now they are battling extremists and extreme poverty.

+1
Level 23
Jun 30, 2016
I just typed in the most popular and the largest countries so it suprised me when it said"South Korea"
+5
Level 71
Aug 15, 2019
Bangladesh actually has one of the highest rates of economic growth in the world right now. There are certainly challenges, but for the most part development is happening rapidly. A Business Insider article I found puts Bangladesh at #23 and the Phillippines at #19, and it also has Pakistan and Vietnam cracking the top 20.
+6
Level 21
Sep 7, 2014
I believe Bangladesh and the Philippines will face too much environmental issues throughout the next decades, which will probably hinder them becoming major economic powers.
+2
Level 35
Jun 2, 2017
Well the Phillipines might be soon be part of the Economic Tigers of Asia '. (Singapore South Korea Taiwan Japan) (( Or maybe Japan is not part of them and the Phillipines is part of it))
+6
Level 82
Sep 15, 2014
Using silly PPP makes it even more impossible to predict, too. Like we know what the cost of living in Nigeria 36 years from now is going to be...
+3
Level ∞
Sep 15, 2014
PPP should make it easier to predict since we won't have to guess about the vagaries of the currency market.
+7
Level 82
Sep 16, 2014
How so? PPP means we have to guess about the vagaries of the currency market AND the vagaries of inflation, and wages, and standards of living, and everything else that effects the prices of the goods that PPP is based on.
+4
Level 68
Oct 4, 2020
Weirdly, I agree with kalbahamut that PPP is probably not the best metric here. It's meant to measure how much someone in a country can on average buy, and not how rich a country is compared to another.
+1
Level 31
Apr 14, 2022
If it counts PPP,then China is the top 1 now.
+7
Level 37
Sep 15, 2014
I wouldn't say India is politically unstable. They have a strong and reliable democratic process and a competent army to protect it. What is unstable is their foreign policy that changes with each change in government.
+1
Level 82
Sep 15, 2014
I just said they were less stable than China. More unpredictability in the system makes growth projections harder to make.
+4
Level 71
Mar 10, 2021
Obviously these comments are from a while ago, but India is clearly not doing very well politically right now. COVID also hit their economy hard. Not sure how this will affect their economy in the long term, but worth mentioning.
+6
Level ∞
Jun 27, 2016
It is interesting to see how the list changed between 2013 and 2015. Estimates for the US increased by 4 billion and estimates for India decreased by 7 billion. It would seem that, in general, predictions for the demise of the US and the rise of Asia have been overly enthusiastic.
+3
Level 47
Jun 28, 2016
Those numbers are tiny though, less than 1% change. Unless you meant trillion?
+4
Level ∞
Jun 28, 2016
D'oh! Yes, trillion of course.
+2
Level 51
Apr 2, 2020
I'd be fascinated to see where a combined EU would fall on this list. And I wouldn't be surprised if they're the leader by 2050, if only by default.
+5
Level 47
Aug 16, 2020
Depends on what countries will join till 2050 and how these economies will develop. Let's look back 32 years from now: The year is 1988. Who would have predicted that just 32 years later the following things will be true:

A) There will be no USSR in the 2020 list.

B) There will only be one Germany which will be the biggest economy in Europe.

C) Countries like Russia, Ukraine, Belarus or Kazakhstan will pop up.

D) Some countries will do a complete 180 and turn their third world economies around among them being South Korea and Poland (related to the previous points).

E) Italy and Japan (two economic powerhouses in the 80s) will stagnate dramatically.

It's really impossible to predict the long term future. In 2050 China could dwarf all other countries or it could break up. The US could remain number 1 or it could completely crash. The EU could seize to exist or it could become the major power (with countries like Turkey and Ukraine joined and UK rejoined). All possible.

+1
Level 67
Apr 21, 2022
Crazy that Japan "stagnat[ing] dramatically" is their being the fourth largest economy in the world.
+3
Level 65
Nov 29, 2020
I completely disagree with your assessment of the US economy. The US had such an advantage on the rest of the world post WW2, considering the rest of the Allies were either decimated by the fighting to a much larger extent than the US, or doomed to collapse because of their economic structure, or both. Japan decimated China post WW2, but with such a large population and natural resources it would only be a matter of time before China became the largest economy, which it just recently had. The US is still experiencing much higher levels of economic growth compared to the rest of the "developed world." I don't think its correct to claim that the United States has dismantled the foundations of economic opportunity that led to its growth in the 20 or so years after WW2. The US has simply seen the rest of the world catch up, and it's inevitable that growths slows after decades due to diminishing returns.
+2
Level 57
Jan 23, 2021
I’m not surprised about China. Yes, the one-child policy will haunt the country for a long time and limit it’s growth, but it wouldn’t happen fast enough to knock it below India or the US by 2050. I’ve seen some projections expecting the US to overtake China again in the late 21st century, but that far in the future we’re practically guessing.
+1
Level 60
Jan 9, 2024
we're practically guessing on this too. My wildcard guess is Kyrgyzstan will become a major world power and invade all of its neighbors creating a new superpower stretching from the Bering strait to the Persian Gulf.

Or not

+1
Level 67
Oct 15, 2021
Weirdly, US GDP growth has been mostly consistent since Reagan took over?
+1
Level 49
Sep 22, 2022
Bangladesh, as the rest of South Asia, has severe environmental problems coming its way.
+1
Level 48
Oct 5, 2023
How about Malaysia? it is my wildcard for already some time. I compare it usually to India in terms of potential and outlook.
+1
Level 26
Sep 15, 2014
Look, just because a country got a big economy doesn't mean that its always good.
+8
Level 82
Sep 16, 2014
Who said that?
+6
Level 47
Apr 30, 2020
JHAssassin said that! :)
+2
Level 44
Jan 19, 2022
he means that life expectancy, standarts of living and people happines don't depend on GDP of the country
+1
Level 44
Sep 16, 2014
100% WOOHOO!!!
+1
Level 73
Sep 24, 2014
just for my personnal information, what about South Africa ?
+1
Level 36
Oct 23, 2014
South Africa is not member of G-20 and it is not too closer to be part of them!
+2
Level 65
Dec 30, 2014
Forgot Vietnam
+6
Level 82
Jan 3, 2015
Vietnam has changed so much in the last six years or so it's incredible. I was in Saigon in 2008... there was hardly a single private car on the road. Just a handful of taxi cabs and a buttload of cheap motorbikes. I went back last year and cars are everywhere. New, modern buildings are going up. The pace and extent of change is amazing.
+2
Level 75
Aug 16, 2015
How so? They are a socialist state, unless they follow what China is doing...
+13
Level 82
Sep 5, 2016
Communist really isn't an economic or social theory as applied in Asia so much as it is a word that means single-party authoritarian government. Go to Vietnam and you will see that, for all intents and purposes, they have fully embraced capitalism.
+1
Level 85
Jun 28, 2016
I guess Vietnam didn't make the cut this latest round
+4
Level 76
Jun 28, 2016
maybe they should rethink putting the UK on this list
+5
Level 31
Jul 25, 2016
Haha yes

And Italy (possibly France, Germany and Spain but I think the former two would be able to ride it out) should the Eurozone be no more come 2050.

Italy has huge financial problems. That coupled with the refugee crisis, I expect it would drop off this list easily

+1
Level 39
Sep 5, 2016
The UK will be fine. Leaving the EU is not the disaster some say it is. Besides, having a large economy doesn't mean that the standard of living will be any good. Pretty sure Brazil for example will still be a global crime hotspot.
+7
Level 70
Dec 15, 2018
Leaving the EU is a pretty bad idea and will almost certainly make the economy worse. Whether this effect will be big enough to make the UK drop off the list remains to be seen, especially as predicting the future is generally quite difficult. My guess is that the effect will not be great enough to make that happen, and will probably be largely diluted by other economic events by 2050.
+1
Level 79
Dec 28, 2020
And political events. Scottish independence is looking pretty likely now. It's less than 10% of the UK economy but that'd still make a difference.
+1
Level 41
Sep 5, 2016
Wasn't too sure if Spain would be on there but managed to get them all in plenty of time
+2
Level 66
Sep 5, 2016
I don't expect Saudi Arabia will actually be there. They are already foregoing saving in their sovereign wealth funds in order to produce oil more cheaply than the Americans. At current rates of drawdown, they will be out of cash in 5 years, and god only knows what happens when they run out of money to placate their people
+1
Level 47
Sep 5, 2016
5 years is a long time though. Just saying that oil prices will definitely rise in 5 years time.
+4
Level ∞
Sep 5, 2016
Nevertheless, Saudi Arabia does seem too high on the list. They currently have a high GDP/capita and also a quickly growing population. I wonder if their 2050 GDP projection is just a simplistic extrapolation of those two things.

But there is only so much oil money to go around. Its also likely that the demand for oil will be significantly lower by 2050 as gas-powered cars become rare or even banned - as is scheduled in the Netherlands.

+9
Level 82
Jul 20, 2019
Hey, who knows? Maybe with global warming and rising sea levels, by 2050 the demand for sandbags will be huge. Saudi Arabia has a lot of sand.
+1
Level 50
Sep 7, 2016
Spain and Italy but not Norway? Where did this Pricewatercoopers took its opinions?
+11
Level 47
Sep 7, 2016
Spain's population is 9 times the size of Norway. You think that the average Norwegian will be 9 times richer than Spaniard in 2050?
+1
Level 33
Mar 22, 2024
yes
+1
Level 70
Sep 8, 2016
It is only 2016!!!!!!!!! Why are you making a quiz about the future!?!?!?!?
+2
Level 58
Dec 16, 2016
Because there are projections out there which happen to be interesting.
+5
Level 71
Oct 6, 2018
'Cos you can't make a 'forecast' about the past.
+2
Level 65
Jun 28, 2017
And then...war happened
+1
Level 60
Oct 28, 2017
Did Vietnam vanished way ?
+4
Level 22
Mar 28, 2018
My main question and observation about this list is , why no Iran? They have a young robust population who are highly educated and also have the backing of oil much like Saudi Arabia. The only thing they are lacking is the connections with the US. They could easily make these connections with China due to the massive New Silk Road Initiative that Iran will be a major hub of. So who knows. Definitely a quiz that makes you think. Population is a key resource in global economic hegemony.
+1
Level 61
Dec 15, 2018
Surprising that the United Arab Emirates isn't on there.
+1
Level 51
Sep 3, 2019
surprised that poland did'nt make its way into this list
+1
Level 39
Mar 7, 2022
same
+2
Level 70
Jan 5, 2020
PPP? Come on guys. Gotta have nominal for this kind of comparison.
+1
Level 43
Jan 15, 2020
Can we get an updated version?
+1
Level 32
Mar 20, 2020
0:34 ez
+1
Level 29
Apr 4, 2020
Missed Turkey and South Korea
+1
Level 78
Oct 5, 2020
Got them all, mainly using guesswork.
+2
Level 27
Dec 18, 2020
India will still have such a low per capita income,india should come out of it's hindu politics to develop
+2
Level 56
Jul 14, 2021
lol I just did the name the countries by first two letters quiz a few seconds ago so when I did this quiz I accidentally started typing the countries by their first two letters.
+1
Level 32
Aug 26, 2021
Saudi Arabia cant be ahead of Turkey
+1
Level 52
Sep 20, 2021
This can not be truth. Indonesia can be big and have many people living in there, but Indonesia still faces problems. India is poor country. Europeans will rise ofc
+3
Level 76
Apr 18, 2022
Sure India and Indonesia have some "problems", but I think you are overestimating how big the "problems" actually are, and they will probably get better in the future. Also, the ridiculous amount of people living there basically guarantees they will be on the list anyway.
+1
Level 21
May 6, 2022
indonesia problem is corruption
+2
Level 52
Mar 26, 2022
I believe Europe will be higher than some poor countries
+1
Level 25
Jun 14, 2022
i missed nigeria
+3
Level 57
Apr 9, 2023
I disagree with Nigeria, Brazil South Korea, China, and Japan.

Nigeria- I disagree with this one because I don't think they will make that much progress due to corruption and political instability.

Brazil- I disagree with this because other path in recent years. I can agree with a large rise of GDP but not to this extent considering recent years.

South Korea- South Korea is going to have one of the worst aging problems which I think will limit their economic growth.

Japan- Same as South Korea

China- I think China will continue to grow but not this much. Currently China is in a rough spot and needs a new economic strategy considering Chinese workers are becoming more expensive with Indonesia and Vietnam possibly replacing them. Chinas debt is also huge thanks to their aggressive investing. I think they will continue to grow but not this much.

+1
Level 67
Jun 20, 2023
1:26
+1
Level 69
Feb 20, 2024
surprising that Nigeria is the least-guessed lol. I always instinctively type Nigeria for anything that has to with [blank]est [blank] by 2050

It was literally my first guess in this quiz cuz I barely read the title