GDP per capita is a useful indicator of the whether an economy is growing or contracting from the perspective of the individual participant rather than the often-used nominal, aggregate GDP number. A simple demonstration of this is whether you would rather live in a country of 1 billion people with $15,000 GDP per capita or a country of 100 million people with $150,000 GDP per capita all other things being equal (both have economies of the same aggregate size)?
