A kind of visualisation that has become very popular in recent months is the “bar chart race” that compares things on one attribute, over a long time period. You may already have seen chart races of the most popular YouTubers or songs, but some of the most eye-opening races show an aspect of economic history.
In this comparison of countries’ Gross Domestic Product, we see that the recent rise of China’s and India’s economies puts them back to the position they had before the Industrial Revolution in the early 19th century. While the relative positions of the countries are changing, the numbers themselves are sky-rocketing in this period: a lot of the world got richer at a much, much faster rate than for the preceding thousands of years of civilisation.
With any such chart, there will be things missed out or inexact. Some countries ceased to exist, or came into existence: the above chart has Russia existing continuously as one entity, but for a lot of the 20th century, Russia was part of the Soviet Union rather than a country in its own right. The political entity now known as India didn’t come into existence until 1947: the country in the same location at the start of the 19th century was the Mughal Empire.
Another source of error is that for the distant past the numbers are estimates based on incomplete data. Countries will differ in how well records were kept, what kind of records, and hence how meaningful the estimates are. All these are reasons to interpret the numbers cautiously.
Another country comparison: internet users from 1990 onwards.
Again, look at the different magnitude of the numbers in 1990 (when tens of thousands of internet users in one country was a lot) versus more recently.
Instead of countries, let’s now look at cities’ population:
Again, we see European and North American cities tearing ahead early on, but being left in the dust by Asian and South American cities more recently. Comments in the discussion point out cities in South America and the Indian subcontinent that weren’t included in the historical data.
There is always a problem of defining the population of cities: to take the built-up area itself or the wider metropolitan area? For example, the population of London is eight million, ten million or fourteen million depending on which definition you take. So these charts shouldn’t be taken as giving an exact number of inhabitants for each city. Again, there are also cities not included because not enough historical data were available.
Back to countries, here’s the chart race for CO2 emissions: not a race anyone should want to win.
Bearing in mind that countries trade each other, a country’s own emissions are not purely the result of its own economic activity. For instance, there are emissions from Chinese factories that are producing goods for export to other countries. So the relation between economic and activity and emissions is complex.
This chart doesn’t take into account population: per capita emissions give a very different race: