It is said Britain is the 4th richest nation on the planet. Who are the top three and how is this measured?

Answer 1

4th largest economy is no longer France it is the UK.
It is not the 4th richest. wealth is measured by Gross Domestic Product per head (GDP per capita). For example China has a GDP of $2.225 trillion, its GDP per head is only $1716 that is because they have around 1.5 billion people.
UK is 4th largest economy measured by (GDP)
USA,JAPAN,GERMANY,UK,FRANCE

Answer 2

1. United States
2 Japan
3 Germany

A far better ranking system is the competitive scale. The top 3 competitive nations doesn't change too much here are the current ones:

1. Switzerland

2. Finland and

3. Sweden

GDP (Gross Domestic Product= the amount of goods coming out of factories and being sold or on order ) is the value that decides if a nation off set against the level of national debt. The subsequent value in adjusted dollars is considered to be the equivalent wealth of that nation. GDP-National Debt = National wealth.

Don't confuse this number however with the happiness of that nations people, the two things are seperate issues.

Answer 3

Here is a chart of Nations GDP which stands for Gross Domestic Product. It is all the goods and services provided by all the companies combined.

Rank Country GDP (millions of USD)
— World 44,433,002
— European Union 13,446,050
1 United States 12,485,725
2 Japan 4,571,314
3 Germany 2,797,343
4 People's Republic of China 1 2,224,811
5 United Kingdom 2,201,473
6 France 2,105,864

Answer 4

actually it is generally considered that luxembourg, norway, united states, and ireland have the hight GDP per capita. if you were to measure wealth by this standard then that would be the ranking. if you were to measure by real GDP then the top four would be united states, china, japan, then india. there are problems however, with ranking countries' wealth using GDP. it does not take into account any ills the society may have. all GDP measures is the amount of consumption and savings within a society. some may consider social ills to have a negative impact on GDP so it may not be entirely accurate.

edit: China has a much higher GDP per capita then that figure above, it is around $7198 (adjusted for p.p.p.)

Answer 5

As the others have said: US, Japan, Germany, UK. France, Canada, Italy and Russia round out the G8 which together represent 65% of the entire world's wealth.

The most accepted ways of measuring wealth of a nation are the GDP and the purchasing power internationally. Here's a good paper I found that explains it in plain English.

Answer 6

In looking at this figure you need to understand how it is calculated and what it refers to. If you are looking at Gross Domestic Product (GDP), look to wikipedia for a definition (below). There are many ways of ranking countries - this is only one. The US is number one in many categories, but not all.

The reason that the UK is there is due to its role as a financial hub, meaning that we earn a great deal of money from processing financial transactions from other countries. The good side is the money, the bad side is that it can give a distorted view of the economic prosperity of a country. Many countries are much better off when looked at from the perspective of the individual rather than the country as a whole.

Answer 7

Britain is the 5th richest. China is the 4th richese.
It is measured by GDP( gross domestic product)

Answer 8

We may well be the fourth richest, but not for much longer. Our GDP is being progressively taxed more and more, as the economy grows, the growth is disapearing in tax! Which Gordon Brown then wastes. Hospitals are closing, Schools indoctrinate children in destructive political correct double think, whilst continually dumbing down the children. Violent crime iss rising fast, burglaries are down, purely down to the vigilance of home-owners, but Gun Crime is exploding.

bah! this labour government is a disaster.

Answer 9

Well If Wales for example was counted seperately (the british labour party don't of course)- it is now poorer than moldova, and large areas of it recieve objective one funding, making it one of the poorest areas in the whole of europe.

So maybe fouth - with this much disparity aint that great...

Btw I believe we are now Fifth.

Answer 10

There seems to be many different ways to determine wealthiest countries, have a look through the links below.