Income per Person (GDP per capita, PPP) in Sierra Leone: 1800 to Today (and Tomorrow)

Statistics often reduce human existence to cold calculations, but the economic output of a nation tells a profound story of daily survival and labor. Income per person, measured as GDP per capita in purchasing power adjusted international dollars, attempts to capture the average yearly economic output available for each citizen. For Sierra Leone, every single value in this dataset represents a statistical fact about the lives actually lived there, tracking the material realities of food, shelter, and trade across generations from the nineteenth century into the distant future.

The historical arc reveals a gradual ascent. In the 1800s estimate, the average stood at 600 intl-$, slowly rising to 800 intl-$. Growth continued through the mid-century, touching 1,500 in the 1950s and 2,600 in the 1980s, before experiencing dips in the 1990s and 2000s. By the 2020s, income per person stands at 3,800 intl-$. Looking ahead, the trajectory points toward a 2100s projection estimating a future level of 11,624 intl-$, marking a long transition in material capacity.

If you were born in Sierra Leone across these changing eras, your world would be defined by these shifting baselines. An ancestor living through the 1830s estimate of 660 intl-$ navigated a different economic landscape than someone experiencing the 3,150 recorded in the 2010s. Today, however, the 3,800 intl-$. figure ranks #148 of 157 countries. These figures trace the economic boundaries within which generations have built their homes and pursued their livelihoods relative to the rest of the global community.

Explore MYRIAD to compute your own parallel lives across the centuries.