Life expectancy vs. GDP

امید به زندگی و تولید ناخالص داخلی

Context •How We Got Here •Economic Development •Tools •Data & Databases •
Posted by Rezwan • May 04, 2009 • (0) Comments •
Printer friendly • • مطلب را به بالاترین بفرستید: Balatarin

This gapminder graph illustrates the correlation between improved health (as measured by greater life expectancy) and Income Per Person (gross domestic product per capita) of a country. Of interest in this graph: In general, first, health improves, then wealth:

China (red), India (blue), Iran (green) and America (yellow) all experienced dramatic jumps in their health before wealth began to increase.

Click on the graph above go to an interactive version on the gapminder site. There, you can press "play" and watch the changes unfold over time, or highlight different countries to compare with Iran. Also, you can change the information on the axes and investigate other factors.

This makes sense. Healthy people are more productive.

For India and China, improvement in health is followed by steady improvement in wealth in a very straightforward manner. In the past few decades, the curves are very similar. Only the timing is different. The curve shifts to the right (greater personal income) in the early 70s for China, and the early 80s for India.

America, in contrast, has been moving toward the right since the late 40s. You can actually see WWII there.

Iran has a very interesting trajectory. It is interesting in that it did not improve in health, but first improved in wealth for many decades. Then, from 1940 to 1955, health rises, with no change in income. Currently, Iran continues to move towards greater prosperity. It's interesting to see where the jogs to the left (drop in GDP) occur.

The first setback in GDP occurred in 1951 and didn't turn around until 1955 (overlapping the Mossadeq era).

The second setback occurred in 1976, 3 years before the revolution. Then, in 1981 things improve a bit, then worsen again in 1983, and turn around in 1989. The trajectory is headed back to the right, and has almost caught up to the 1976 high of GDP.

It would be interesting to correspond these dates to major world events, the war with Iraq, sanctions, oil prices, etc. It would also be interesting to break down the statistics internally, to see how different demographic groups within Iran compare. It would also be good if the site had better economic indicators other than aggregate GDP per capita. Unfortunately, the data is limited. But the folks at Gapminder.com are trying to make more global data available.

Of course, with current global economic uncertainties, it will be interesting to see how the lines of fortune for all countries change as the years unfold.

Note that the income axis is logarithmic, and life expectancy is linear. Here we show the same data with both axes linear. America seems a bit richer now.