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I assume you wrapped your head around it by now, but I'll explain it anyway. Bottom right; barely 5% of the world population is equal or richer than the averag
by navane 8y ago
I assume you wrapped your head around it by now, but I'll explain it anyway.
Bottom right; barely 5% of the world population is equal or richer than the average US citizen. 20% of the world population has at least 25% of the average US citizen, or 80% of the world has less than than 25% of the average US citizen.
Note that a graph of the US alone would look about the same.
I think its a highly informative graph, that you will not get at a glance. Another mistake they noted in the article:
"Another odd thing is the choice of colour. In an attempt to emulate Labour’s colour scheme, we used three shades of orange/red to distinguish between Jeremy Corbyn, other MPs and parties/groups. We don’t explain this. While the logic behind the colours might be obvious to a lot of readers, it perhaps makes little sense for those less familiar with British politics."
I think it's a bonus if you can make a graph have extra layers of information for the informed reader. In literature this his highly regarded. Why not in data visualization?
- simonh 8y ago>Note that a graph of the US alone would look about the same. Well, 50% of the population would be richer than the average US citizen rather than 5%.
- Ndymium 8y agoThe disparity between the (very) rich few and the many poor would result in the share of people above and below the hypothetical "average" person not being 50/50.
- carlob 8y agoMedian vs average? The GDP per capita in the US is around 60k, that's around the 77th percentile: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
- haberman 8y ago> Bottom right; barely 5% of the world population is equal or richer than the average US citizen. But GDP per capita is not a measure of personal income or wealth, it's a measure of production of a country. Since it not a measure that can be applied to people individually, it seems ambiguous what it means for a given person in the world to be "above a given % of US GDP per person." US GDP per capita in 2017 is about $60k. What does it mean for an individual in the world to be "above" this? Their personal income in a year? Their total wealth? My best guess is that this graph considers a person "above" this if they live in a country that has a per capita GDP above $60k (at purchasing-power parity). So really it's a comparison of countries and their per capita GDP, weighted by population. So I think the bottom right is actually saying "5% of the world population lives in a country that produces more per person than the US." It doesn't say much of anything about how rich individuals are.