ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Gross national income

Imagine that you have a lot of toys and candy, and you also have some friends who have their own toys and candy. Now, imagine that you and your friends decide to combine all of your toys and candy together to make a big pile. That big pile of toys and candy is like a country's gross national income!

Gross national income is a fancy way of saying how much money a whole country makes in one year. Just like how you and your friends combined all of your toys and candy to make a big pile, a country combines all of the money made by its people and companies to find out how much money the whole country made in a year.

This big pile of money includes things like salaries earned by workers, profits made by companies, and taxes paid to the government. If the big pile of money gets bigger from year to year, it means that the country is getting richer, just like how having more toys and candy makes you feel richer. So, gross national income is an important way for countries to measure their economic growth and success.