10 Countries Do Not Have 90% of World GDP

48 thoughts on “10 Countries Do Not Have 90% of World GDP”

1. How many countries does it take to get to 90% of the world’s GDP?Report

   1. Assuming my Excel-fu is not weak (it is not), it looks like it takes 42 countries. The 42nd country is Bangladesh. The 41st, if you’re curious, is Switzerland.Report

      1. Huh. That’s much better than I thought. I thought the number would be in the mid-high 20’s.Report

         1. It takes 17 countries to get to 75%. After that, we’re basically at countries that each add less than 1% to world GDP. So your instinct is still pretty close to correct.Report

            1. I come very close to agreeing with that despite the different methodology and data set than Ryan comments on — I get USA, PRC, India, Japan, Germany, Russia, Brazil, UK, France, Italy, Mexico, South Korea, Spain, Canada, Indonesia, Turkey, Australia, and Taiwan (in that order) accounting for 75% of GDP. That’s 18 countries rather than 17 but the general point remains functionally the same.

               (#19 is Poland, BTW. Don’t forget Poland.)Report

               1. As a note: the major difference in data is that Maddison’s dataset uses 2008 numbers, while the CIA has 2011 estimates. Given CAGR, 3 years is more than enough time to shift some things around.Report

                  1. The data that both of you guys dug up is an inequality forum post in itself.

                     What is the responsibility of these 17/18 countries toward the rest of them? Are these responsibilities being met? What would meeting these responsibilities actually look like?

                     And so on.

                     Next year.Report

                  2. It’s worth noting that income inequality between individuals is not directly comparable to GDP inequality between countries because of population differences. For example, China and India rank #2 and #3 respectively in terms of PPP-adjusted GDP, but they’re not particularly wealthy countries on a per-capita basis; they just have over a billion people each.Report

                  3. Also, poorer countries have far larger portions of the economy not accounted for in the GDP statistics. Not only because of black markets – which are large in some places – but also because peasant farmers often buy and/or sell almost nothing while producing enough to feed and cloth themselves.Report

                  4. *nods* let 40 states out of the Union secede, and our GDP would spike dramatically.Report

                  5. In no way is that true. Unless you mean per capita GDP.Report

                  6. Ryan,
                     nonsense. GDP would rise as exports would rise. We’d export a ton to the 40 ct. union, and thus gain a ton of GDP.Report

                  7. Show your work. How does the US export more to the 40 states that secede than their economies generate? There is an accounting identity in here somewhere that you are violating pretty spectacularly.Report

                  8. ‘nother thing: we can expect that the 40 state union would probably have lower governmental spending, due both to having less money and political considerations. If, as is probable, the 10 state union pushed most of the money it gave to the other 40 states into governmental spending… you’re also looking at a rise in gdp.Report

                  9. You’re moving money from X to G. The net change in Y is zero.Report

      2. Are you using different data than me, Ryan? Or did you count both the EU and its component nations? What mistake did I make to get a result so different than yours?Report

         1. I’m using the data at the source listed on the chart. Herr Doktor Madison has an Excel spreadsheet with all this data in it.Report

         2. Also, what are you counting as your “result”? If you mean the “everything other than the USA” bit from below, the difference is we counted from different directions. I went top down, you went bottom up.Report

            1. That’s exactly right — I went from the bottom up, using the CIA’s 2011 GDP estimates. Different data sets and switching from top-down to bottom-up aggregation easily accounts for the difference between my reported result below at 4:10 p.m. and the result Ryan reported six minutes previously while I was taking a client’s phone call instead of blogging.Report

               1. That’ll learn ya.Report

               2. while I was taking a client’s phone call instead of blogging.

                  Slacker.Report

   2. It’s the CIA World Factbook to the rescue! According to the CIA, the United States of America accounts for about 19% of total GDP for the entire world.

      So the answer to your question is “Every nation on Earth other than the U.S.A. “Report

      1. 100-19=81% so the 90% answer is: “Every nation on earth including the USA but not including whoever is 10%”.

         BTW a timely article in the Economist on this same graphic is available hereReport

2. As a guy who’s not fully up to sped on international economicy thingies, I have to ask – how do you measure countries comparative wealth? How much is based on comparative GDP, gold reserves, available natural resources, human capital, etc.?Report

   1. Gold reserves are a neglible part of national wealth. Foreign currency reserves are a better indicator, in which case the PRC ranks first with 3.5 trillion. Japan has the next highest with about 1.3 trillion USD. The highest gold reserve by comparison is the US with about 480 billion.Report

      1. thanksReport

      2. That’s just financial assets though, which doesn’t mean anything much. If you were really looking at national wealth in the sense of “ability to consume” that would be meaningful from a welfare economics point of view, you’d have to use some kind of total valuation of the entire capital stock, which would be very hard, since lots of it is intangible or illiquid and hard to value. In reality, PPP adjusted GDP is probably as good as it gets.Report

      3. wait till August! Report

   2. You usually don’t. It’s not something I’ve ever seen done before.Report

3. Apparently western countries have too much stuff already according to this UN flunky. UN Official: Western Nations ‘Don’t Need More Cars, More TV’

   http://politics.kfyi.com/cc-common/mainheadlines3.html?feed=104707&article=10212164Report

   1. Helen Clark is the ex-PM of NZ, and was unemployable there. We can only hope she can do for the UN what she did for her Labour Party.

      http://curiablog.wordpress.com/category/nz-political-party-polls/Report

      1. I’m not a big fan of Clark, but I should point out that she managed to unify the New Zealand Labour party for more than a decade, which implies no small degree of political skill.

         Also, based on the article Scott linked, I’m not so sure she’s saying “rich countries should be poorer”. It sounds more like she’s saying that “economic growth is more important for poor countries than for rich ones”, which I don’t find especially objectionable.Report

         1. Yeah, your read seems right to me. She certainly isn’t saying the West should give up its cars and TVs.

            It’s especially odd to see this complaint from conservatives, who constantly assure us that the poor don’t have it so bad in the USA. And I don’t say this to poke fun; as Jason pointed out in a couple recent posts, they’re not wrong! The American poor, even if I think they should be still better off, are waaaaay richer than most of the rest of the world’s (and history’s!) poor.Report

            1. if you count being in debt as richer…Report

               1. I count things like having indoor plumbing, access to penicillin, air conditioning, and cell phones as richer. Most of America’s poor have these things. Even if I think they should have more things, and believe me I do, it’s insane to make the claim that they aren’t, by international historical standards, in much better shape than the majority of people who have ever lived.Report

                  1. of history I have no doubt. Report

                  2. …So they’re not poor because they have refrigerators? Since when did you work for Heritage? (Teasing.)Report

                  3. We should, like, you know, do a symposium or something on this topic.Report

         2. I was having a little fun with Helen Clark, JamesK, but she did ride some good times while in office, even her own party doesn’t speak well of her now she’s gone, Labour now slurps hind teat, and she has become an expatriate UN scold, no doubt with a sweet salary, hi-rise NY apt and limo service.

            Were she to have stayed in Mother NZ, she’d actually be working for a living and shlepping her own groceries from the boot to the elevator, if she had either one. You people are not big on parasites, which is why you’re so cool.Report

4. Has anyone considered the X-axis and the jump in years? Yikes.Report

   1. Yeah, that’s not good graph design.Report

   2. I don’t really see a problem with that. A logarithmic scale on the x-axis is fine for many long-term historical data series where changes are much more rapid in modern times than in the past. This isn’t really a proper logarithmic scale, but it’s close enough, and gets the point across.Report

      1. As veteran players of the Civilization games know, industrialization dramatically shifts up the delta on productivity, so the very nice graphs you get at the end of the game compress the objective “time” significantly to increase the historical verisimlitude (in part because productivity gains within the game itself are closer to linear if all game turns are considered equal spans of time).

         So maybe the X-axis time compression here is intended to reflect reality mirrored through gaming attempting to mirror reality.Report

         1. Don’t mention Civ on this blog! I glance it over during free moments at work. Now I’m getting the shakes from Civ withdrawal. Oh lordy….Report

            1. the cure for that is ADOM.Report

            2. Ah, ceremonial burial, the bedrock foundation of all cultural achievements!

               Finding that first source of iron!

               Nuking the Zulus!

               Civ-civ-civ-civ-civ-civ-civ-civ-North-won’t-get-any-work-done-today!Report

   3. I’m with Brandon here. I actually think the x-axis is making a decent point, which is that the notion of productivity (and productivity gains) is a verrrrrry modern thing.Report

      1. Understandably. However, if you take a 100 year gap – as the map does a few times – from 1900 to 2000, then all of the points look unmoved, despite huge gains and losses within that time. Who is to say that the economy did not twist, turn, and topple over itself in the 1000 year gap from the 0 point and the 1000 point?

         Perhaps I am being nit-picky, but it is just poor chart design (among the several other flaws pointed out in the article).Report

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