Last 2,000 years of growth in world income and population (REVISED)

After posting a graph of world population and GDP per capita for the last 2 thousand years, I went back and simplified the design based on the feedback I received.

{Click on the image to take a closer look}

The previous version used color to show a change in GDP per capita and included grid lines which I removed. Also in the new graph, I added the United States GDP per Capita for select years as a comparison.

Data estimates for population and GDP per capita are from Angus Maddison Emeritus Professor, Faculty of Economics, University of Groningen. 1990 international Geary-Khamis dollars are purchasing power parities (PPPs) used to evaluate output which are calculated based on international prices. See United Nations Statistics Division for more information their computation.

[tags]income distribution, population, GDP per Capita, economic history, income, history[/tags]

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Tagged as: Angus Maddison, Bubble Chart, GDP, GDP per Capita, Population, United States, World

http://www.timeoftrouble.com daniel

This makes it very easy to see how incomes have been soaring over the last 300 years or so, and shows as so much bunk all the gainsayers’ comments about the poor getting poorer.
Fred Swartz

Very interesting — thanks for the graph. How the GDP is distributed in the population would be interesting, eg, the median income.
Sam

Also I have a message to all people visiting this very URL:

Your really cool
Siddhartha

To Daniel: This shows no evidence for disproving that the poor are getting poorer. Averages can always be driven up by extreme cases. Like Swartz asked for, you need median income, or quartiles to be able to judge distribution.

Very interesting graph. Look at the jump around 1800. And around 1500 when the New World was discovered.
Galt

Check your premises on who the “poor” are and why they are poor. There is obviously money being produced by somebody, as is apparent by the fact that we are all communicating from various locations through computer technology. I am not able to do this because somebody handed me the computer for free. I had to work (produce) the means to trade for it. No form of control or regulation from external sources can make the “poor” unpoor. ALL living creatures must work for and produce their own survival, otherwise nobody produces survival. The argument would simply be that because some people choose to produce the means of their own survival–to the extent that we see in more economically free societies–that they must give up those means to those who have not produced and if they will not give it up “willingly” then they must give it up at the point of a gun. Refute it, I dare you.
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boo

just tell me wat the f***king population growth is!!
R. Scott LaMorte

I don’t think the average GDP per capita is nearly as interesting as the median income. Average income growth doesn’t really mean the average person’s wealth grew as shown on this chart, so this chart is fairly misleading.

Consider the story about six middle class people in a bar. Suddenly Bill Gates walks in and on average they all become billionaires.

While the average GDP per capita for the world is a modest sounding $6000-$7000, the median income, that of the person exactly half-way up the income ladder, is a more miserly $650 per year.