South Korea's GDP per person nearly tripled since 1995, now 15% above Japan
In 1995 Lithuania and Poland produced about a third as much per person as Japan. By 2025 Lithuania had passed it and Poland was close behind, helped along by a Japan whose people were getting older.
Writing about this? Charts, data and findings you can quote.
In the mid-1990s, Japan was what a rich country looked like. Its carmakers and electronics firms were household names around the world, and Tokyo was famous as one of the most expensive cities on earth.
Poland and Lithuania were in a different world. Both had only just left communism behind, and nobody would have mentioned them in the same breath as Japan.
Thirty years later, Lithuania produces as much per person as Japan does, and it is not the only country that came from far behind.
Data: World Bank, World Development Indicators (CC BY 4.0). GDP per capita at purchasing power parity, constant 2021 dollars. Japan = 100 every year. Hover or tap for any year.
The six are chosen by a fixed rule: every economy below 75% of Japan's GDP per person in 1995 and at least 95% in 2025. Guyana also qualifies (19% to 173%), but it is left out because an oil boom, not broad growth, drove it.
Five of the six joined the European Union on the same day, in May 2004, and spent the next two decades plugging into its markets, supply chains and funds. South Korea took a different road and exported its way up. Poland, the one still just short, is close enough that the International Monetary Fund expects it to pass Japan this year.
Nearly every large country gained on Japan
Picking countries because they caught up is bound to flatter the story, so here is every large OECD country. Nearly all of them gained on Japan over those thirty years, and South Korea, the UK, Czechia and Spain moved past it. the UK and Spain started too close to Japan to count among the six. Italy is the only one that lost ground, and it is still ahead.
Data: World Bank, World Development Indicators (CC BY 4.0). The neutral comparison: no country picked by its outcome. Hover or tap a row.
When almost everyone gains on one country, the obvious question is what happened to that country.
Japan kept growing while its workforce shrank
Less than you might think, because Japan never stalled. On the usual measure, output per person, it has grown more slowly than any OECD country except Italy, but count only the people of working age and it has kept pace with Germany.
Think of a household where the same two people earn the money while the grandparents move in. Each earner can get a raise every year and the family's income per head still grows slowly. Japan has become that household: in 1995 about seven in ten Japanese were of working age, and now it is fewer than six in ten. Colombia, whose population got younger, shows the same effect running the other way.
Data: World Bank, World Development Indicators (CC BY 4.0). GDP per capita (PPP) and the same output divided by people aged 15 to 64. Both on the same scale.
Visitors see this everywhere. The taxi driver in white gloves is often older than their parents, and so is the man in the hard hat waving cars past a building site. More than half of Japanese in their late sixties still have a job, and employers are now legally asked to try to keep their staff on until 70.
Nor is it a passing phase. The birth rate has been low for two generations and fell again last year, with fewer babies born to Japanese nationals than in any year on record. Outside the big cities you can see where that leads: across Japan, one home in seven stands empty, many of them inherited by children who live somewhere else.
The other way to refill the workforce is to bring people in, and Japan has started, quietly, to do that. Foreign residents are at a record, though still only about one person in thirty.
Take the ageing away, and only Malta is ahead
So how much of the catch-up is really Japan getting older? One way to find out is to imagine a Japan that had kept its 1995 share of working-age people. That Japan would be about a fifth richer per person today, and only Malta of the six would be ahead of it, with South Korea close behind.
Data: World Bank, World Development Indicators (CC BY 4.0). GDP per person in 2025, Japan = 100. The dashed line is Japan with the working-age share it had in 1995 (70% instead of 59%), every other country as it really is. A thought experiment, not a forecast.
None of this makes the six any less remarkable. Poland's output per person has more than tripled in that time and Lithuania's has roughly quadrupled, while Japan, short of workers, was still getting more productive. The harder question is whether they can keep going, because they are getting older too.
The catch-up generation is ageing too
South Korea is furthest along. Its population started out far younger than Japan's and is now ageing faster than any other country here, and its birth rate is among the lowest in the world, lower even than Japan's.
Data: World Bank, World Development Indicators (CC BY 4.0). Population aged 65 and over, % of total. Hover or tap for any year.
The European six have their own version of the problem. Lithuania has lost more than a fifth of its people since it regained independence, most of them to emigration, as young people headed west once the EU opened up. Losing young people that way shrinks the working-age share, the same arithmetic that has held Japan back.
Renting alone still takes a big share of pay
For anyone thinking of moving to Warsaw, Prague, Vilnius or another big city in these countries, output per person is the wrong thing to look at, because output is not pay. What matters is what a flat costs against what people there earn.
The usual rule of thumb is that rent should take no more than 30% of pay. In the Polish, Czech and Lithuanian cities a one-bedroom takes around two-fifths of an average local salary, and in Sliema, Malta, more than half. Only Busan and Seoul come in under it. Tokyo is not much easier.
Asking rent for a one-bedroom against average net pay in the same city; hover or tap a city for the amounts. Pay is the mean, so a typical worker spends more. Sources for every city.
The flats themselves are no longer cheap: a one-bedroom in Warsaw costs about the same as one in Berlin, and more than one in Tokyo. What differs is pay, which goes much further in Berlin.
Thirty years ago nobody would have mentioned Poland or Lithuania in the same breath as Japan, and on output they now belong there. Local pay has further to go, and anyone moving there on a local salary will notice it first in the rent.
We'll email you a confirmation link. A few emails a month, some with partner offers. Unsubscribe anytime. Privacy policy.
For reportersCharts, data, credit line and findings you can quote
Use these charts in your article, no need to ask. Please link to this story as the source. In print, credit CrossBorders. The charts and data are licensed CC BY 4.0.
Download all charts and data (.zip)Source: CrossBorders, "Six countries that caught up with Japan", 1 November 2026, using World Bank data (CC BY 4.0). https://crossborders.io/insights/countries-that-caught-up-with-japan
- Poland's GDP per person rose from 37% of Japan's in 1995 to 97% in 2025, at purchasing power parity.
- Lithuania went from 32% of Japan's GDP per person to 101% over the same period, passing Japan in 2025. Malta, South Korea, Czechia and Slovenia had already moved ahead.
- Japan's GDP per person grew 27% from 1995 to 2025, the second slowest of all 38 OECD members after Italy.
- Measured per person of working age, Japan's output grew 50%, against 51% in Germany. The share of Japanese aged 15 to 64 fell from 70% to 59%.
- Had Japan kept its 1995 share of working-age people, its output per person would be about 19% higher, and of the six countries only Malta would be ahead of it.
GDP per person measures output, not wages. Please describe it as GDP per person at purchasing power parity, not as income or pay.
Questions, corrections or another cut of the data: [email protected].
The story's rent chart uses third-party city data and is not covered by this licence.
What these numbers don't sayOutput is not wages, and three other limits
- GDP per person measures output, not wages. A country can match Japan's output while its workers earn far less.
- All GDP figures are at purchasing power parity, so exchange-rate swings don't distort them.
- Taiwan is not in the World Bank data, so it can't appear here.
- Output per person aged 15 to 64 flatters Japan a little, because so many older Japanese still work: their output is counted, but they are not.
- The World Bank's figures end in 2025, the latest full year it has published. The line about Poland in 2026 is an IMF forecast on the IMF's own figures, which put Poland at 98% of Japan in 2025 against the World Bank's 97%.
Sources and methodWorld Bank data, context sources, rent and pay
World Bank, World Development Indicators (CC BY 4.0), downloaded 2026-11-01. GDP per capita, PPP, constant 2021 international dollars (NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KD); population (SP.POP.TOTL); population aged 15 to 64 (SP.POP.1564.TO); population aged 65 and over (SP.POP.65UP.TO.ZS). Download the chart data.
Source: International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook Database, October 2026 (GDP per capita, PPP). The comparison with Japan is our calculation. It is not part of the charts or downloads, and it is not covered by their licence.
- Older workers: Statistics Bureau of Japan via Nippon.com
- Retention-to-70 rule: Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare
- Births: health ministry 2025 vital statistics
- Empty homes: 2023 Housing and Land Survey
- Foreign residents: Immigration Services Agency
- Korea's fertility rate: Ministry of Data and Statistics
- Lithuania's population: OSW on emigration, World Bank for the population figures
CrossBorders city data. Rent is the asking or newly agreed rent for a one-bedroom flat; pay is average local earnings from national statistics, converted to net for a single person with no children. Each city's sources are on its city page; the method is on our methodology page. Amounts are shown in US dollars at the ECB reference rate of 29 October 2026 ($1.113 per euro).