How many Terabytes a year does a citizen contribute to the Data Economy?

How many Terabytes a year does a citizen contribute to the Data Economy?

We’ve been discussing ways to measure and understand the Data Economy, so we first compared all the data exchanged around the globe in a year to the size of each country's economies. Now, we add the population factor to it.

Check out the map and the graph we've made with data gathered from World Bank Data and IDC Annual Size of the Global Datasphere.

A closer look at the data:

  • Small, rich European countries lead the list;
  • Small populations do not mean low data exchange per person: Luxembourg (600.000 habitants) and Ireland (4.9 million) are good examples to observe;
  • Nordic countries such as Norway and Iceland have significant percentages;
  • Let’s not forget the Asian countries, with special attention to Macao (Chinese area), second on the list;
  • The USA still figures on the top 10, even with a population of over 300 million people;
  • Qatar is the only Arab country to appear on the list with numbers similar to the USA, regardless of its significantly smaller population of 2.7 million.

Rich, developed countries are still on the top when it comes to the Data Economy, but let’s keep an eye on any potential exceptions. Do you have any other insights on that?