It takes a Ukrainian 216 years to earn $1 million

There are many ways to determine the quality of a country’s economic system. You can use such indicators as GDP per capita, GDP per capita at purchasing power parity, average/median salary, labor productivity, GDP change rates.

Experts from Numbeo and Picodi.com proposed an interesting way to evaluate the quality of the model and the economic system as a whole. They calculated how long it would take to earn $1 million for the average salary in the country.

Conventionally, all 102 countries of the rating can be divided into three groups. The first group includes countries in which $1 million can be earned during one person’s working life, that is, in 43-45 years. This prestigious group includes 28 countries. The leaders are four countries (Switzerland, Singapore, Luxembourg and the USA), where you can become a millionaire in less than 20 years.

Most of the countries in this group (with the exception of a few oil countries) have maintained a respect for and commitment to the principles of freedom, private property, enterprise, and open competition for decades, for more than five generations. In other words, they chose capitalism.

The second group includes 37 countries. There you can earn $1 million for 2-4 working lives of a person. That is, if a husband and wife work full-time in the family, then their family will earn a million, in the best case, according to the results of their working career or after their two children finish their working careers. EU countries (Italy, Czech Republic, Croatia, Estonia, Poland, Portugal) were in this group.

And finally, the third group, which includes Ukraine. It also has 37 countries. They need from five to 16 working lives to earn $1 million. It is opened by Ecuador (163 years), and closed by Pakistan (621 years). The indicator for Ukraine is 215 years and 10 months.

What does this indicator say? The faster a country can honestly earn $1 million per salary, the higher the quality of its legal, economic and social institutions, the more progressive the culture, which rewards success in the conditions of honest, fair economic activity.

The Ukrainian indicator of 216 years perfectly characterizes the state of institutions, elements of the socio-economic model, the culture of society and the regime of relations between business and the government.