Why "Per-Capita" Measures Often Are Inaccurate

Dr. Genevieve Bell, Intel Fellow, is an anthropologist who studies how humans react and adapt to changes around them and how technology needs to adapt to humans and their needs in different habitats. Sometimes "habitat includes such mundane things as household size.

In India only five percent of the households are "single-person" households while France and Germany have over one third households in the single-person category. So why is that significant? If one makes any sort of cross-country comparison between India and either France or Germany, and the comparison involves anything measured on a per-household basis, there are going to be potential anomalies.

Something measured on a "per-household" basis will not capture the significant differences per-capita magnitude unless adjusted for radically different household sizes.