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Kush Kulshrestha

Health and Wealth Dashboard


This dashboard is one of my favorite visualizations as it shows with blazing clarity how the division of countries into two groups is not appropriate anymore.


The x-axis represents income which basically is represented by the GDP of the country in constant 2011 international $ adjusted to PPP and inflation [1]. GDP is often represented as a measure of the economic well-being of a country. The y-axis represents Lifespan or Life Expectancy in years [2]. Each bubble represents a country and the size of the bubble represents population size [3]. Each bubble has a color, representing the region of the country it represents [4].


Adjusting the GDP to Purchase Power Parity (PPP) and inflation is essential for any meaningful comparison between countries as they have different costs of living and the same amount of $ in some countries could buy a lot of goods and services as compared to others.


Why use log scale instead of linear scale for GDP? Quick explanation - log scale is used when the differences are not always comparable and there is some compounding at play. The increased GDP contributes to the further increase in the GDP, i.e. the growth is nonlinear. Check out the following link for a quick refresher - www.econbrowser.com/archives/2014/02/use-of-logarithms-in-economics


There are two important observations to be made from this dashboard -

1. We see that at any particular point in time, there are countries spread around a wide range of income and lifespan axis. This means there are countries spread from the left corner (poor) to the right corner (rich) and from the top of the page (healthy) to the bottom of the page (sick).

2. We can also see there is an impressive overall improvement in both Income and Health levels for most countries. Every country in the world has improved its life expectancy over the last 200 years. In fact, almost every country has improved by almost every measure.


The below image shows the improvement my country India has experienced over the period of a few decades while supporting one of the largest shares of The below population on Earth.


Because of our combined efforts, we have made great strides in providing basic sanitation and medical facilities to a very large proportion of the population and lifting people out of poverty in multiple continents - just in a few decades. Check out the improvement in a time-lapse video below.



You can view my interactive Tableau dashboard below or visit here for a better view.




References -


[1] Feenstra, Robert C., Robert Inklaar and Marcel P. Timmer (2015), "The Next Generation of the Penn World Table" American Economic Review, 105(10), 3150-3182, available for download at www.ggdc.net/pwt. PWT v9.1 - GDP per capita, Penn World Tables (1950 to 2014) - Adjusted for price changes over time (inflation) and for price differences between countries to allow comparisons – it is measured in international-$ in 2011 prices.


[2] Max Roser, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Hannah Ritchie (2013) - "Life Expectancy".Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: 'https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy' [Online Resource]


[3] Total population is based on the de facto definition of population, which counts all residents regardless of legal status or citizenship. The values shown are midyear estimates.

(1) United Nations Population Division. World Population Prospects: 2019 Revision. (2) Census reports and other statistical publications from national statistical offices, (3) Eurostat: Demographic Statistics, (4) United Nations Statistical Division. Population and Vital Statistics Report ( various years ), (5) U.S. Census Bureau: International Database, and (6) Secretariat of the Pacific Community: Statistics and Demography Programme.


[4] World development indicators. Washington, D.C. :The World Bank.

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