Gold, at human scale.
Explore a historical gold stock relative to the world’s population.
Gold per person
USGS historical-production benchmark; observation year unspecified. Not a current stock inventory or personal holdings.
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Enter a gold-stock estimate in troy ounces. This changes the comparison, not the published source data.
6,012,189,608.33 total troy ounces entered.
per person, using the 2025 population of 8,215,424,893.
The ratio describes scale. It does not describe an allocation, a median holding or personal ownership.How this differs from country estimates
The USGS benchmark counts historically produced gold, leaving out gold still underground. The country explorer uses a separate model to attribute estimated holdings to countries; its totals are not reconciled to this benchmark.
Sources, assumptions & download
USGS: how much gold has been found? supplies the historical production benchmark. Its observation year is unspecified. World population is World Bank SP.POP.TOTL, 2025, source updated 2026-07-13.
Troy ounces per person = total troy ounces ÷ population. The source benchmark is 187,000 metric tonnes, converted using 32,150.7465686 troy ounces per tonne. Rounded display values are not used in the calculation. Earth outline: Natural Earth, public domain.