Since economically developed countries generally offer better living standards, modern societies have come to accept that human development is implied by economic progress. However, is this true in all parts of the world ? This is an important question for policymaking international organizations such as United Nations or World Bank. This inforgraphic visually explains the evidence in this regard gathered from publicly available data over the years.
All data and code is available for download from the git repository [gitRepo]. The interactive visualization can be viewed at this link on bl.ocks.org.
Economic progress is measured using Gross Domestic Product (GDP) [1], which is the total monetary value of all finished goods and services produced within a country's borders. For reliable comparison among countries over time, we use Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) adjusted per-capita GDP [2] data available from Gapminder [3]. However, can it be called progress if the GDP of a country grows at the expense of depleting natural resources, or at the expense of the overall well-being of its citizens ?
This is why United Nations Human Development Report proposes a new indicator called Human Development Index (HDI) as the criteria for assessing the development of a country [4]. Although some articles speak in favor of HDI [5], a report from Gapminder shows that GDP and HDI values are highly correlated [6, 7].
Even though many countries show similar GDP and HDI, there are some countries that do not follow this trend. We highlight these countries and the common factors related to the disparity between their economic progress and human developement. Instead of comparing actual values of GDP HDI, it is more revealing to rank the countries according to their GDP and HDI values and compare the ranks. Although most countries show good correlation between their GDP and HDI ranks, countries in 4 specific regions of the world show sharply different GDP and HDI rankings. The effects are observed in both directions:
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Several countries in middle east and north Africa, south Asia, and sub-Saharian Africa show good GDP rank but poor HDI rank. Some of these countries are rich in oil (e.g. Kuwait in middle east or Gabon in Africa) or diamond (e.g. Namibia and South Africa) and can achieve high GDP without significant contribution from their people. However, the north African coastal country Djibouti and south Asian island country Maldives probably have different reasons for high GDP and low HDI.
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Several countries in Europe and central Asia show poor GDP ranks and good HDI ranks. Some of these countries were formerly part of the Soviet Republic (e.g. Georgia, Ukraine, Tajikistan, and Moldova) or Yugoslavia (e.g. Serbia, and Montenegro); so they started with good literacy rate and are probably still working toward mature economic systems.
The charts show the relationship beteen time-series data of two sets of ordered variables, GDP rankings and HDI rankings. Although often scatter plots are best for visualizing correlation, and line charts are for time-series data, we decided to use a different chart type for the following two reasons. First, we want to examine the miscorrelations in both directions, i.e. when GDP is high and HDI is low or when GDP is high and HDI is low, and put them in geographic context. Slope plots are good for comparison of ordinal data (rank order), and maps are good for geographical context of nominal data (countries and regions). Time series data are animated with the progression of time through frames displaying individual years. Finally, drop-down lists [11], hovering, and highlighting are provided to explore and drill down the data by individually selecting each year, and by individually highlighting each geographical region, and each country.
Some excerpts from the feedback on the first iteration are listed below
- You could include a link to an explanation of what is GDP and HDI Would be nice see which countries are connected to the blue lines. I am not sure if tooltips when mouse over the lines would be appropriate here, but it is an option
- Maybe the "Click a country to highlight" filter isn't working properly. I attempted to select "Australia" in 2011, and it didn't highlight any line. If you don't have data for a particular year/country, would be better indicate it somewhere
- The visualization is exploratory rather than explanatory. The README file talks about "countries with high ranks in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) do not necessarily have high ranks in Human Development Index." I sort of see that, but it's really a mixed bag. Some high ranking countries have blue lines and some high ranking countries have red lines. But I don't really see a top ranked country that has a drastically different position on the rights side of the chart.
- The visualization is a little over plotted, which makes it difficult to see trends. It also seems to block certain countries so that I can't see their tooltips. Can the data somehow be curated in some way so that there aren't so many lines? Maybe taking averages by region? Or is there an interesting story looking at the top 10 countries on the left and top 10 countries on the right? Or the bottom 10 countries?
Based on the above feedback, countries were grouped into regions and were highlighted on a mercator projection. These new display elements and visual encodings clarify the findings in the data. More explanatory findings are added to the graphic that now highlight that only a few contries show significant discrepancy in GDP and HDI rankings, and these countries share some common scenarios. This new graphic can be viewed in the second iteration below.
Excerpts from the feedback on the second iteration are listed below
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I would still consider this project as a little bit more exploratory than we need. Below are my comments:
You have several statements regarding chart explanation inside your readme file:
- In general GDP rank matches with HDI
- Some countries have huge GDP rank because of oil or diamonds
- Some countries have better HDI rank because of legacy (Soviet Union etc).
As for now, first two statements are not quite clear in the chart, maybe you need to add the tooltips to explain it. E.g when you hover the mouse on Kuwait point, there will be extended tooltip with the explanation: "This country is rich in oil". It will make your project more explanatory and will highlight all statements you mentioned inside readme file.
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Third point: in general we can see - there are lots of correlated GDP-HDI lines, nevertheless, I think that viewer will be focused on uneven countries rather then correlated. We need to highlight it somehow. My suggestion is to just add information from your readme on the top about the general correlation of most countries.
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When I choose the region and then choose other year, my region is reset to "all". I recommend you to add the possibility to track different years for the particular region.
The explanatory message was brought to sharper focus in the third iteration with an improved legend that explains the yearly observations per region. Individual country tool tips have been enhanced to show additional per-country explanation. The Javascript code was enhanced to explore different years for a particular region. This latest iteration can be seen at
[gitRepo] GDP vs HDI: Code Repository
[1] Gross Domestic Product - GDP
[3] Per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) data from Gapminder
[4] United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report
[5] Gross Domestic Product vs Human Development Index
[6] HDI surprisingly similar to GDP/capita
[7] Human Development Index (HDI) data from Gapminder
[8] Alberto Cairo: Three steps to become a visualization/infographics designer (a Tableau version)
[10] Enter, Update, Exit: An Introduction to D3.js
[11] D3 How to change dataset based on drop down box selection