2017). In other words, US wealth-to-GDP is now a whopping 4.9 times. To understand the deeper meaning of that number, think of wealth as capital and GDP as output. The wealth-to-GDP ratio is therefore the capital-to-output ratio, and an average ratio of 3.8 implies that it would (on average) take $3.8 of capital to produce $1 of output. Hence, the ratio is effectively a capital efficiency ratio, and the lower the ratio is, the more efficiently a country utilises the capital at its disposal.
