Research Dive: Per Capita Spending on Wellness Around the World

GWI’s 2024 report, The Global Wellness Economy: Country Rankings (2019-2022), provides two different sets of country rankings. When we look at overall wellness economy size, the countries that come out on top tend to be countries with very large overall economies and populations: the United States, China, Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom. However, when we remove the size factor and measure wellness spending per capita, an entirely different set of countries comes out on top. 

 Key findings from the top-25 country rankings for wellness spending per capita: 

Wellness economy spending per capita is highest in the Seychelles, Switzerland, Iceland, Aruba and the United States. All of these countries had per capita wellness spending higher than $5,000 in 2022. By comparison, per capita wellness spending was only $706 globally.

Most of the top markets for per capita wellness spending are among the world’s wealthiest countries and also rank in the top 25 globally for GDP per capita, such as Switzerland, Iceland, the United States, Austria, Australia, etc. Worldwide, per capita income is just over $12,000; all of the countries on this list are well above that benchmark. The high per capita spending and large wellness economies in these countries reflect a substantial domestic consumer market for wellness products and services, bolstered by high spending by inbound and domestic wellness tourists.

A few countries in this top 25 list are surprising and exhibit a different pattern of spending: Seychelles, Aruba, the Maldives and the Bahamas. These countries rank highly for wellness spending per capita because they are highly tourism-dependent economies. These island economies are popular destinations for high-end wellness tourism, and tourism represents a very large share of their GDPs. In these four countries, a large portion (50-90%) of all wellness spending comes from inbound wellness tourists; therefore, the high per capita spending figures reflect a robust wellness tourism market, but not necessarily high local wellness spending or a well-developed and diversified wellness market for local residents.

Looking at per capita wellness spending also enables us to compare how much consumers are spending on wellness relative to other major categories of out-of-pocket expenditures, including healthcare, clothing, and hotels/restaurants.

Worldwide, per capita spending on wellness was $706 in 2022. This spending level is on par with the average consumer out-of-pocket expenditures on health goods/medical services ($711), according to Euromonitor data.

When we look at regional spending patterns, per capita spending on wellness is higher than consumers’ out-of-pocket spending on healthcare across every single region except North America.

Spending on wellness is also higher than the spending on clothing/shoes ($289 globally) and hotels/restaurants ($475 globally) on a per capita basis, both globally and in every region.