If Utah Was A Country

If Utah was a country it would have a GDP of $105.7 billion. This would place Utah above Qatar’s GDP of $102.3 billion but below 32 other states and 55 other nations. But what is GDP and how is it measured?

Gross Domestic Product

The gross domestic product (GDP), a basic measure of an economy’s economic performance, is the market value of all final goods and services made within the borders of a nation in a year. The most common approach to measuring GDP is the expenditure method. This method states that GDP is equal to the total expenditures for all final goods and services produced within the country in a stipulated period of time (usually a 365-day year). Goods and services are consumption plus gross investment plus government spending plus exports minus imports.

For a state the counterpart to GDP is Gross State Product (GSP) and is a measurement of the economic output of a state or province. It is the sum of all value added by industries within the state. Bear in mind that flows of goods, services, labor, and capital across state boundaries are not measured very accurately as compared to nations.

Population

If Utah was a country its population of 2,736,424 would rank it above the nation of Jamaica with a population of 2,719,000. Utah ranks 34th among the states in population. If Utah were a country, and no other U.S. states were, it would be positioned 139th in population among all nations.

Fertility

Fertility rate is live births per 1,000 women aged 15-44 years. The TFR (Total Fertility Rate) of a population is the average number of children that would be born to a woman over her lifetime. Bear in mind that the replacement fertility rate is roughly 2.1 births per woman for most industrialized countries.

If Utah was a country its fertility rate of 2.63 would rank above Ecuador’s 2.59 and would be higher than the world average of 2.61. If Utah were a country it would be 91st among the nations for fertility and ahead of all other U.S. states.

Summary

You can probably think of many more comparisons of Utah with other countries. Because the United States is such an economic powerhouse the GDP comparison is the most impressive, especially when comparing a larger state. The GDP of the United States ($14,264,600,000,000) is almost as great as the next four largest economies combined, which are those of Japan ($4,923,761,000,000), China ($4,401,614,000,000), Germany ($3,667,513,000,000), and France ($2,865,737,000,000).

One last item of note. If Utah was a country it would have a balanced budget.

Sources

Wikipedia: List of U.S. states by GDP (nominal). I used the 2008 GSP.
Wikipedia: List of countries by GDP (nominal). I used the 2008 list by the International Monetary Fund.
Wikipedia: List of countries by population.
Wikipedia: List of U.S. states by population.
United States Total Fertility Rate Increases. I used the 2006 rates.
Wikipedia: List of countries and territories by fertility rate. I used the 2008 CIA TFR rankings.