Spain in the world

🌍 Spain in the world

Where does Spain stand among the world's 200 or so countries? Here it is compared on 55 indicators from the World Bank, the IMF, the UN, the WHO, Ember and the World Happiness Report, which gather data for almost every country using common definitions. Figures are per inhabitant, in percentages or in purchasing power parity (which allows for the fact that living costs differ between countries), never in totals that only reflect the size of each country. For a closer comparison with Spain's European neighbours, using Eurostat's harmonised statistics, see Spain in Europe.

Against the world, Spain is nearly always above average, so the comparison that tells you most is the one with the European Union. Better or worse is only judged for the 37 indicators where more is clearly better (wealth, life expectancy, employment…) or clearly worse (unemployment, mortality, emissions…). For the rest (inflation, fertility, urban population…) the rank simply runs from highest to lowest, without judgement.

All indicators

Search for an indicator or filter by section, then click its row to see the world map, the country ranking and Spain's trend compared with the world, the EU and the countries you choose.

Notes

• Countries: all those published by each source, which are not always the same (the World Bank covers some 215 countries and territories; life satisfaction, about 140; OECD social housing, only a few rich countries). The World and European Union aggregates are each source's own, weighted by population or by GDP depending on the indicator, not the simple average of the countries.
• Reference year: the latest year with data for Spain and for most countries. International sources publish with a lag of one or two years, and some countries report earlier than others: the most recent years, with fewer countries, can be picked in the map's drop-down.
• Rank: 1 is the best (the highest value if more is better, the lowest if more is worse). For indicators with no clear reading, 1 is the highest value. Among very small countries (Monaco, Liechtenstein, Caribbean islands) the extremes are sometimes not very representative.
• Purchasing power parity (PPP): converts each currency into international dollars that remove price differences between countries, to compare what money can really buy. GDP per inhabitant is also in constant 2021 dollars, adjusted for inflation.
• Borders: those of GISCO, Eurostat's mapping service, following the EU's position (Western Sahara shown separately from Morocco).
• The map colours split the countries into five groups with the same number of countries in each. Green is better and red is worse; for indicators with no clear reading, darker blue is higher.

Data updated 7 minutes ago