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Regional wealth, PPP, Central Europe, Slovakia
The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20100602052209/http://www.pitt.edu/~votruba/qsonhist/regionalwealthcentraleurope.html

Per-capita GDP in PPP

While highly approximate, per-capita gross domestic product expressed in purchasing power parity is the closest commonly calculated index to a representation of people's relative wealth.

Better calculations of relative wealth take account of people's incomes, taxation, health care cost, and other factors. Due to the complexity of raw-data gathering and factor selection among countries with different legislations and welfare systems, there are no broad regional comparisons with greater accuracy than per-capita GDP expressed in PPP or primary household incomes expressed in purchasing power consumption standard.

Capitals

The purchasing power in the capitals is comparable only with the data for Prague (253% of Slovakia's average), Vienna (240%), Bratislava (236%), and Berlin (144%), because those four countries report their capitals as separate statistical units.

Ljubljana, Budapest, and Warsaw, by contrast, are not represented on their own. They are included in larger regions, which increases those regions' averages (to 157%, 151%, and 128% respectively), just as, e.g., Upper Bavaria's average of 243% is elevated by the inclusion of particularly wealthy Munich.

European wealth

Approximate purchasing power of per-capita GDP relative to Slovakia

euwealth150

Green - wealthiest
Yellow - above SK
Red - below SK
Blue - poorest

Source: Eurostat
for 2008.

According to the 2008 nationwide data (regional breakdowns will become available in 2011), Slovakia's per-capita purchasing power rose above Estonia's (where it was through 2003), the Czech R. rose above Portugal, while according to estimates, Slovenia (above Portugal for over a decade) may reach or rise above Greece in 2010. The relative positions of the rest of Central Europe remained unchanged.

Relative wealth

Q: How does Slovak income compare to Central Europe?

In general, wealth in Slovakia and all of Central Europe drops along the line from west to east (it drops in the reverse direction in Western Europe).?The countries to the east and south-east, in turn, have lower purchasing power than Central Europe. From a historical perspective, it is unlikely to change without a concerted effort ? the pattern has been in place for much of the past millennium.

2007pppce350

The numbers show each statistical region's purchasing power relative to Slovakia's national average set at 100%. Source: Eurostat for 2007.

The yellow shading matches Slovakia's purchasing power range from the eastern region (68% of Slovakia's average) to the country's average (100%). Green = above the range , yellow = within the range, red = below the range. The range leaves out the region of Bratislava taken in isolation, but its purchasing power is included in the national average.

By comparison, the U.S. national purchasing power average calculated in the same manner for the year 2007 would be represented by 230% in the map, i.e., below the regions of Bratislava, Vienna, Bavaria, and Prague, and above the rest of the area.

2007pppeurope350

While there was no match at the collapse of communism in 1989, the hampered Central European countries began to match or surpass the purchasing power in unaffected Europe's outlying areas from around the mid-2000s. The capitals rose far above their countries earlier.