1. Per capita is a common term in economics used to designate what will be the average per/for each person when divided into a total or group X. Example: ‘Europe has an income per capita higher than a minimum salary per inhabitant’.
Etymology: loan from Latin, per capitawhich refers to ‘per head’, ‘per individual’.
Grammatical category: Adjective.
in syllables: per + capi-ta.
Per capita
The well-known concept of per capita is a term that comes from the Latin language and which means in other words ‘for each head’. This term is normally used in the field of statistics, whether social, economic or of any kind, and it is also common to use it to refer to different types of divisions or distributions between groups or communities of people, since it always implies how much receives or perceives each of those people.
One of the most common ways in which the concept of per capita can be found is that which has to do with the income that is estimated to be the average of the population of a certain region. Thus, a division is made on the total figure to know with certainty an equitable number for each of the people. However, what is problematic about this exercise is that the per capita number does not always reflect reality: for example, if the per capita income of the Argentine population is one thousand pesos, this does not mean that everyone earns that, yes or yes, since there may be few people who perceive much more and many people who perceive much less. The acronym used to indicate this data is normally GDP or gross domestic product, which always includes the notion of per capita since the final result tells us how much each of those people who are part of that community produces.
However, the expression per capita can also be used for many other things, even if they are always related to some kind of figure. It is normal to find a proportion of the environmental impact that a region generates per capita, although, once again, this figure is not entirely accurate or true, but rather serves mainly to know an average for the region.
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