Per-Capita Leaders
China and the US lead almost every market in total. Per person, the leaderboard looks completely different, and that is where exposure hides.
Total consumption tells you which economies are big. Per-capita consumption tells you which societies are exposed. A gasoline price spike barely dents a country that burns little per head and guts one that burns a lot. The leaders per person are rarely the giants: they are small, rich, energy-intensive states, cold coffee-drinking nations, or rice-based food cultures where one commodity is most of the diet. Reading the per-capita leaderboard is how you find out who actually feels it when a price moves.
In each table, the highlighted "Global average" row is the world per-person baseline, and the lighter grey italic rows are the big reference economies (the EU, the US, China, and India), included for comparison even when they are not the per-capita leaders.
Oil
A sprawling driving economy burns more than four times the global average per head. The US uses roughly 21 barrels per person per year against a global average near 4.6, so a pump-price move hits American households far harder than the headline economy size suggests.
| Country | Per-capita consumption |
|---|---|
| Canada | roughly 21 barrels / person / year |
| United States | roughly 21 barrels / person / year |
| South Korea | roughly 20 barrels / person / year |
| Global average | roughly 4.6 barrels / person / year |
| European Union | roughly 9 barrels / person / year |
| China | roughly 4.5 barrels / person / year |
| India | roughly 1.4 barrels / person / year |
Natural gas
Among large economies, Russia, Canada and the US burn five to six times the global average per head, because gas runs much of their power and heating. Converted to barrels of oil equivalent, an American uses about 16 barrels of gas energy a year on top of 21 of oil, which is the fuller picture of how energy-intensive that economy is.
| Country | Thousand cubic feet / person / year | Barrels of oil equivalent / person / year |
|---|---|---|
| Russia | roughly 120 | roughly 20 |
| Canada | roughly 113 | roughly 19 |
| United States | roughly 95 | roughly 16 |
| Global average | roughly 18 | roughly 3 |
| European Union | roughly 26 | roughly 4.3 |
| China | roughly 11 | roughly 1.8 |
| India | roughly 2 | roughly 0.3 |
2025 consumption from the Energy Institute Statistical Review, over 2024 population from the World Bank. Barrels of oil equivalent use the industry convention of 6,000 cubic feet of gas per barrel.
Coal
Coal per head marks the economies that built their power and steel on it and have not left. Kazakhstan, South Africa and Australia mine it at home and burn it in their power stations. China burns more than half the world’s coal and, per person, about three times the global average, more than the US or the EU by a wide margin. South Korea and Japan import almost all of theirs and still rank high, for steelmaking and power.
| Country | Tonnes of coal equivalent / person / year | Gigajoules / person / year |
|---|---|---|
| Kazakhstan | roughly 2.6 | roughly 76 |
| China | roughly 2.2 | roughly 66 |
| South Africa | roughly 1.9 | roughly 57 |
| South Korea | roughly 1.9 | roughly 55 |
| Australia | roughly 1.8 | roughly 54 |
| Global average | roughly 0.7 | roughly 20 |
| Japan | roughly 1.2 | roughly 35 |
| United States | roughly 0.9 | roughly 26 |
| India | roughly 0.5 | roughly 16 |
| European Union | roughly 0.35 | roughly 10 |
2025 consumption from the Energy Institute Statistical Review, over 2024 population from the World Bank. Coal is measured in energy rather than tonnes because a tonne of lignite holds about a third of the heat of a tonne of hard coal; one tonne of coal equivalent is 29.3 gigajoules. Estonia would rank second at about 2.3 tonnes, but its figure is almost entirely oil shale, which the Energy Institute counts among solid fuels, so it is left out.
Coffee
The Nordics dominate, drinking two to three times what a US consumer does. A frost in Brazil that doubles the bean price is felt most in Helsinki and Oslo, not in the countries that grow it.
| Country | Per-capita consumption |
|---|---|
| Finland | roughly 12 kg / person / year |
| Norway | roughly 10 kg / person / year |
| Iceland | roughly 9 kg / person / year |
| Denmark | roughly 9 kg / person / year |
| Switzerland | roughly 8 kg / person / year (US is roughly 4 to 5 kg) |
| Global average | roughly 1.3 kg / person / year |
| European Union | roughly 5 kg / person / year |
| United States | roughly 4.5 kg / person / year |
| China | roughly 0.2 kg / person / year |
| India | roughly 0.1 kg / person / year |
Rice
In rice-based food cultures the grain is most of the daily calorie intake, so a price spike is a food-security event, not a line item. These countries eat fifteen to twenty times what the US does per head.
| Country | Per-capita consumption |
|---|---|
| Myanmar | roughly 220 kg / person / year |
| Bangladesh | roughly 210 kg / person / year |
| Vietnam | roughly 200 kg / person / year |
| Cambodia | roughly 200 kg / person / year |
| Indonesia | roughly 150 kg / person / year (US is roughly 12 kg) |
| Global average | roughly 65 kg / person / year |
| China | roughly 75 kg / person / year |
| India | roughly 70 kg / person / year |
| United States | roughly 12 kg / person / year |
| European Union | roughly 6 kg / person / year |
Sugar
Sweet-toothed rich economies and large sugar producers lead per head. Demand is relatively price-insensitive, so the exposure here is more about diet and health policy than about price shocks.
| Country | Per-capita consumption |
|---|---|
| United States | roughly 40 kg / person / year |
| Brazil | roughly 45 kg / person / year |
| Germany | roughly 35 kg / person / year |
| Russia | roughly 40 kg / person / year |
| Mexico | roughly 45 kg / person / year |
| Global average | roughly 22 kg / person / year |
| European Union | roughly 35 kg / person / year |
| India | roughly 20 kg / person / year |
| China | roughly 11 kg / person / year |
Meat (all types)
The big livestock and grassland economies eat well over twice the global average. India sits near the bottom for cultural and dietary reasons, which is exactly why the world’s meat-demand growth is expected to come from low per-capita countries as incomes rise.
| Country | Per-capita consumption |
|---|---|
| United States | roughly 125 kg / person / year |
| Australia | roughly 120 kg / person / year |
| Argentina | roughly 110 kg / person / year |
| Spain | roughly 100 kg / person / year (global average roughly 45 kg; India very low) |
| Global average | roughly 45 kg / person / year |
| European Union | roughly 80 kg / person / year |
| China | roughly 65 kg / person / year |
| India | roughly 6 kg / person / year |
Gold
Per-capita gold demand tracks trading hubs and cultures where gold is both jewellery and savings. The leaders are small wealthy entrepots and the great jewellery markets, not the biggest economies.
| Country | Per-capita consumption |
|---|---|
| Hong Kong | among the highest per person (trading and jewellery hub) |
| Switzerland | very high per person (refining and investment hub) |
| United Arab Emirates | very high per person (gold souk and re-export hub) |
| Saudi Arabia | high per person (jewellery and investment) |
| India | high per person at scale (jewellery plus household investment) |
Gold is shown qualitatively here, so the big reference economies are not added as rows: India and the Middle East lead per person; China is mid; the US and the EU are low per person despite very large central-bank holdings. The global average is roughly half a gram of gold demand per person per year.
Copper
Copper per head is a wealth-and-industrialization tell: wiring, motors, electronics, and construction. The manufacturing-heavy advanced economies lead, with China now near the front as its build-out continues.
| Country | Per-capita consumption |
|---|---|
| South Korea | roughly 14 kg / person / year |
| China | roughly 10 kg / person / year |
| Germany | roughly 12 kg / person / year |
| Japan | roughly 10 kg / person / year |
| Global average | roughly 3 kg / person / year |
| European Union | roughly 9 kg / person / year |
| United States | roughly 6 kg / person / year |
| India | roughly 0.8 kg / person / year |
Approximate per-capita consumption, latest available year, drawn from the Energy Institute, EIA, IEA, ICO, USDA, WGC, ICSG, and industry sources. Figures are rounded and illustrative; methods and base years differ across commodities.
What per capita reveals
Read down the leaderboards and two stories separate out. The first is growth. The countries at the bottom of each table, India for oil, almost all of Africa for almost everything, the developing economies for meat and copper, are not low consumers because they will stay low. They are low because incomes are still rising. Per-capita gaps between rich and poor countries are a map of how far demand can still run as those societies get richer. The second is exposure. The countries at the top feel a price spike the most, because the commodity is a bigger share of how they live, drive, heat, eat, or save.
That makes the gap itself the trade idea. The distance between a high per-capita user and a low one is the runway for decades of demand growth, and it is widest in the places with the most people climbing the income ladder. Oil, meat, and copper in developing Asia and Africa are the clearest cases: small per-capita increases across billions of people swamp the marginal demand of any single rich country. Aggregate demand tells you who is big today. Per capita tells you who is exposed today and who is going to grow tomorrow.