🇺🇸 United States vs 🇯🇵 Japan

Live side-by-side comparison of government debt. The United States currently owes about 4.6× as much as Japan — a gap of $31.62 trillion. Updated every second from each country's baseline figure; sources below.

Among the 135 governments tracked here, the United States ranks 12th by debt-to-GDP and Japan 1st. Measured per person, the United States is 2nd and Japan 3rd.

Analysis

By total government debt, the United States ranks 1st and Japan 3rd 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 1.7× that in Japan ($117,749 vs $71,305 per person).

Both countries carry debt above 100% of GDP — the United States at 124% and Japan at 205% — 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 −$15K/sec for Japan), adding roughly $6,466,867,200 to the difference each day.

Scale is part of the story too: the United States' population (343M) is about 2.8× Japan's (123M), 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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