How Global Coronavirus Stimulus Packages Compare [Infographic]

Global lockdowns in response to the coronavirus have resulted in economic turmoil and what is expected to be the worst downturn since the Great Depression in the 1930s. In the United States alone, more than 33 million workers have filed for unemployment since mid-March while the European Union has announced it is expecting a 7.4% contraction in its collective GDP for 2020. The crisis has prompted governments to adopt emergency financial measures and develop aggressive stimulus packages to avoid a catastrophic and historic global economic collapse. Ceyhun Elgin, an economics professor at Columbia University, has been tracking the scale of responses in 166 different countries.

The U.S. has committed to the largest rescue package of any country by far with the three phases of congressional stimulus working out at $8.3 billion, $192 billion and $2.5 trillion. Elgin’s analysis shows that while the U.S. response is the largest in purely financial terms, it is not the most aggressive bailout in relation to economic size, equating to approximately 13% of U.S. GDP. As the following infographic featuring a selection of key countries shows, that is behind Japan’s rescue package which is estimated to be just over 21% of GDP. In Europe where Spain and Italy have endured devastating outbreaks of COVID-19, the size of the stimulus packages are estimated by Elgin to be 7.3% and 5.7% of GDP respectively.

*Click below to enlarge (charted by Statista)