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🇮🇹 Italy vs 🇺🇸 United States

Live side-by-side comparison of government debt. The United States currently owes about 11.0× as much as Italy — a gap of $36.69 trillion. Updated every second from each country's baseline figure; sources below.

🇮🇹
Italy
$3,680,620,908,722
Debt-to-GDP137%
Per citizen$62,512
Per second+$7,240
VS
🇺🇸
United States
$40,368,926,898,538
Debt-to-GDP124%
Per citizen$117,749
Per second+$60,200
In nominal terms, the United States carries the larger government debt — roughly 11.0× that of Italy, a difference of $36.69 trillion. Debt-to-GDP (Italy: 137%, United States: 124%) says more about the burden than the raw total does.

Among the 135 governments tracked here, Italy ranks 8th by debt-to-GDP and the United States 12th. Measured per person, Italy is 6th and the United States 2nd.

Analysis

By total government debt, Italy ranks 6th and the United States 1st 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 the United States is roughly 1.9× that in Italy ($117,749 vs $62,512 per person).

Both countries carry debt above 100% of GDP — Italy at 137% and the United States at 124% — 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 States' debt is growing faster in dollar terms ($60K/sec vs $7K/sec for Italy), adding roughly $4,575,744,000 to the difference each day.

Scale is part of the story too: the United States' population (343M) is about 5.8× 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.

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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Source: Global Debt Clock, based on the IMF World Economic Outlook (October 2026, general government gross debt) and US Treasury data for the United States.
Live data: /api/compare?a=it&b=us · Italy page · United States page
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