🇬🇧 United Kingdom vs 🇮🇹 Italy

Live side-by-side comparison of government debt. The United Kingdom currently owes about 1.2× as much as Italy — a gap of $622.2 billion. Updated every second from each country's baseline figure; sources below.

Among the 135 governments tracked here, the United Kingdom ranks 17th by debt-to-GDP and Italy 8th. Measured per person, the United Kingdom is 7th and Italy 6th.

Analysis

By total government debt, the United Kingdom ranks 4th and Italy 6th among the 135 sovereigns tracked on this site.

On a per-citizen basis the picture can look different from the nominal totals: a resident's notional share of the government debt in Italy is roughly 1.0× that in the United Kingdom ($62,512 vs $61,601 per person).

Both countries carry debt above 100% of GDP — the United Kingdom at 102% and Italy at 137% — meaning each owes more than a full year's worth of national output. What that means for each depends on who holds the debt, in what currency and at what interest rate.

The gap between them is widening: the United Kingdom's debt is growing faster in dollar terms ($8K/sec vs $7K/sec for Italy), adding roughly $80,956,800 to the difference each day.

Scale is part of the story too: the United Kingdom's population (70M) is about 1.2× Italy's (59M), which is part of why the nominal and per-capita comparisons above can point in different directions — a government's debt load scales loosely with the size of both its economy and its population, not either alone.

The United Kingdom and Italy are both grouped under this site's “Europe” region, so this is, in effect, an intra-regional comparison as well.

This analysis is generated automatically from live data as an educational orientation, not financial advice — see the methodology page for definitions and caveats.

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