See data. For real, this time.

While it is perhaps a big strange to start thinking of Russia as a high-income economy, it’s not so surprising when looking at concrete statistics such as vehicle consumption, Internet penetration, etc. – all of which are now at typical South European and advanced East-Central European levels (even if there’s still some way to go to converge with the likes of France or the US).

In per capita terms, this means that the average Russian is now about as rich in terms of real goods he can buy on domestic markets as a typical citizen of Portugal, Greece, Estonia, Poland, or Hungary (though with the caveat that most of the latter places have a lot less income inequality). Below is a table showing the GDP per capita, PPP (current international $) of Russia and comparable countries:

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 Czech Republic 25,885 25,645 25,300 26,209 26,426 Portugal 24,939 24,892 25,547 25,586 25,305 Slovak Republic 23,210 22,546 23,149 24,112 24,896 Greece 29,604 29,201 27,539 25,859 24,667 Russian Federation 20,276 19,227 20,770 22,408 23,549 Lithuania 19,559 16,948 18,120 21,554 23,487 Estonia 22,065 19,470 20,092 21,996 23,024 Chile 16,435 16,190 18,607 21,001 22,655 Poland 18,021 18,796 20,036 21,133 21,903 Hungary 20,432 20,249 20,734 21,455 21,570 Latvia 18,090 15,928 15,944 19,103 21,005 Croatia 20,215 19,158 18,546 19,817 20,532 Turkey 15,178 14,578 15,965 17,242 17,651 Brazil 10,393 10,357 11,187 11,634 11,909 China 6,202 6,798 7,569 8,408 9,233 Ukraine 7,311 6,312 6,691 7,215 7,418

Furthermore, it’s looking as if Russia might have a real chance of overtaking Portugal next year. Just as Putin promised in 2003! (Double GDP; overtake Portugal in 10 years). But even if that fails, at least overtaking Greece is all but assured, so even if Russia misses out on Portugal it will still get to say it is no longer the poorest “proper” European country.