Worldwide GDP per Sq. Kilometer

January 13, 2007 7:33 PM

GDP per square kilometer (jpg), via.
posted by jonson (31 comments total)

I'm not usually one to re-post from reddit, digg, boingboing, kottke or waxy, but this was really fascinating, and hopefully something new to many here.
posted by jonson at 7:34 PM on January 13, 2007

Interesting! ::shoves in "reference" folder of bookmarks::

I love posts like this.

Also: Woohoo! Go Northeastern America!
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 7:36 PM on January 13, 2007

Not surprisingly, it looks a whole lot like those satellite pictures of the earth at night:

Not really. For example, oil fields in the middle east are much oranger then they are bright.
posted by delmoi at 7:41 PM on January 13, 2007

Poor, poor Canada.
posted by peeedro at 7:44 PM on January 13, 2007

I think I have identified the Australian Outback as the ultimate "get away from it all" destination. A good well, some cash buried in mason jars here & there, I'm all set.
posted by Devils Rancher at 7:50 PM on January 13, 2007

The least dark large areas are all cold or dry or high or... a big section of the Amazon Basin, which is about as wet and hot and low as it gets.

By the way, why isn't Prudhoe Bay darker? And do you really believe that the island of Java is as prosperous as Japan? There are some other things like that on that map which don't ring true.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 8:02 PM on January 13, 2007

Poor old Africa.
posted by stammer at 8:02 PM on January 13, 2007

Java? I bet the beneficiaries of Sumatra oil production live in West Java, near the capital.
posted by Listener at 8:05 PM on January 13, 2007

The link says the info is from 1999. I wonder how it has changed since then.
posted by Potsy at 8:21 PM on January 13, 2007

Not surprisingly, it looks a whole lot like those satellite pictures of the earth at night

I recently flew from Shanghai to Munich at night. You look out the window and it's mostly total darkness.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 8:26 PM on January 13, 2007

Poor, poor Canada is right - it is something us Kiwis have sympathy with, as we have to live next to the poor, poor Australians.
posted by Samuel Farrow at 8:34 PM on January 13, 2007

interesting post jonson.

Steven,
"GPD density" is highly biased towards denser populated regions where the GPD per square kilometer is large not because GPD is large but because there are way too many people per square kilometer. Of course "GPD density" is large where GPD is large too...
Think of two families of 4 persons each, with the same income but one living in a farmhouse vs another living in a hut (yeah, I know it is not realistic, it is just an example). The "GPD density" is larger for the dudes in the hut because their GPD is divided by the area they occupy.
I do not think I understand what to take from this map either, but perhaps I need to read the paper *shrugs*
posted by carmina at 8:36 PM on January 13, 2007

steven, it's not per capita, it's per sq km. A small place with a large concentration of poor people will be the same color as one with a few rich people.

And that's why poor canada is all light.
posted by qvantamon at 8:36 PM on January 13, 2007

Who decided those increments? It seems do arbitrary (or am I missing something?).
posted by kisch mokusch at 8:47 PM on January 13, 2007

so arbitrary
posted by kisch mokusch at 8:47 PM on January 13, 2007

Bah, it's all based on East-West wind currents, I hear.
posted by Balisong at 8:49 PM on January 13, 2007

the problem is that the final increment (the dark red) encompasses such a huge range that it's not useful. basically, a poor country with a dense population that hits the bottom of that metric looks the same as, say, wall street. not really useful for comparing the u.s. and europe and japan to indonesia or mexico, but useful for comparing indonesia or mexico to chad or afghanistan or peru.
posted by Hat Maui at 9:06 PM on January 13, 2007

The further he got into that "James Feyrer and Bruce Sacerdote" paper the more I wanted to reach for something to toss through my monitor.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 9:17 PM on January 13, 2007

Only in the social sciences can you quote results with an R^2 value of 0.1 in the freakin' log of the dependent variable. "Yes, we find that 10% of the order of magnitude of your GDP is due to when your island was colonized. The other 90% is either dumb luck or something we couldn't figure out."

Incidentally, why were no places in the US in the $500-$3000/km^2 range? That kind of makes me suspect the data.

Also, what Hat Maui said.
posted by noble_rot at 9:19 PM on January 13, 2007

Wow, look at Germany!

This, friends, is what we could achieve with compulsory five-week vacations per year and a kickass rail system.
posted by brain cloud at 9:23 PM on January 13, 2007

Well, Germany is somewhat helped by the fact that it doesn't contain giant empty stretches of desert, mountains, or tundra.
posted by Justinian at 9:24 PM on January 13, 2007

Here's some interesting cartograms that offer some interesting looks at GPD and population distributions.

And here's a whole bunch.
posted by wah at 10:27 PM on January 13, 2007

.
posted by MonkeySaltedNuts at 11:04 PM on January 13, 2007

so people are the cause of GDP? Who would have thunk it?
posted by empath at 11:04 PM on January 13, 2007

Antartica must have a huge GDP, population and everything else according to these cartograms.
posted by Balisong at 11:40 PM on January 13, 2007

I think I see Bill Gates' house.
posted by boaz at 11:59 PM on January 13, 2007

Where's the future Bush complex in Paraguay? Should be easy to spot.
posted by rokusan at 12:48 AM on January 14, 2007

Well, Germany is somewhat helped by the fact that it doesn't contain giant empty stretches of desert, mountains, or tundra.

I think that's his point. Countries that are rich also tend to be countries that have good land. You get the impression from many politicians and economists that what is singularly important are the institutions under which the populations are governed. Thus the claim that the United States is mighty because it is a republic, and not because it happens to be situated on some of the best land in the world.
posted by moonbiter at 3:13 AM on January 14, 2007

Poor, poor Canada

Well, wait til it thaws.
posted by crowman at 6:19 AM on January 14, 2007

> Not surprisingly, it looks a whole lot like those satellite pictures of the earth at night:

Odd that North Korea shows well up in the orange on the GDP density map but is totally black in the satellite picture. Did Dear Leader say all those wealthy North Koreans have to turn out the light and go to bed at 8pm?
posted by jfuller at 8:32 AM on January 14, 2007

Yeah funny fact jfuller, I didn't notice it myself ^^
posted by autoverzekering at 9:08 AM on January 15, 2007