Top-right cluster
Both safe and rich
The clean top-right cluster: Iceland, New Zealand, Denmark. High GDP and low GPI tend to coincide — but the relationship isn't linear and the gaps are smaller than the rhetoric suggests.
The frontier
The safest, richest country isn't where you'd guess.
Every country we have data for, plotted on two axes. GDP per capita on the bottom. Global Peace Index up the side, inverted so up means safer. 154 dots, no narrative.
Hover or tap any dot for details. Click to open the country profile.
Rich-but-unsafe
Outliers worth a second look
Countries in the bottom-right with high GDP/cap but worse-than-expected safety. Mexico and the United States are the canonical examples — high income, homicide rates that look more like middle-income peers.
Poor-but-peaceful
The other kind of outlier
Top-left: countries with modest GDP/cap but unusually high safety. Bhutan, Sri Lanka and several Central European states sit here. Often a useful starting point for a long-stay or sabbatical decision.
47 countries not plotted — why
The chart only plots countries with both indicators available from the upstream sources. Missing data shows as missing — we don't interpolate. Countries currently without a complete pair:
- Andorra — no GPI
- Antigua and Barbuda — no GPI
- Aruba — no GPI
- Bahamas — no GPI
- Barbados — no GPI
- Belize — no GPI
- Brunei — no GPI
- Cape Verde — no GPI
- Comoros — no GPI
- Cuba — no GDP
- Dominica — no GPI
- Eritrea — no GDP
- Fiji — no GPI
- French Guiana — no GDP and no GPI
- New Caledonia — no GPI
- French Polynesia — no GPI
- Greenland — no GPI
- Grenada — no GPI
- Kiribati — no GPI
- Liechtenstein — no GPI
- Luxembourg — no GPI
- Maldives — no GPI
- Malta — no GPI
- Marshall Islands — no GPI
- Micronesia — no GPI
- Monaco — no GPI
- Nauru — no GPI
- North Korea — no GDP
- Palau — no GPI
- Puerto Rico — no GPI
- Curaçao — no GPI
- Saint Kitts and Nevis — no GPI
- Saint Lucia — no GPI
- Saint Vincent and the Grenadines — no GPI
- Samoa — no GPI
- San Marino — no GPI
- São Tomé and Príncipe — no GPI
- Seychelles — no GPI
- Solomon Islands — no GPI
- South Sudan — no GDP
- Sudan — no GPI
- Suriname — no GPI
- Taiwan — no GDP
- Tonga — no GPI
- Tuvalu — no GPI
- Vanuatu — no GPI
- Yemen — no GDP
Sources. GDP per capita (current USD) from the World Bank, indicator NY.GDP.PCAP.CD, most recent year available per country. Global Peace Index from the Institute for Economics and Peace, 2024 edition. 154 countries plotted; 47 omitted for missing data. Full methodology →