Global Economy

Global Economic Development

The graph I have been looking at shows us the wealth and Health of Nations. Precisely, It compares the Life expectancy (Y-axis) versus Income per person (X-axis) from 1800 to 2010. When looking at the graph, we can observe several correlations between these two variables.

Along the years we witness a very close relationship between the income per person and the level of life expectancy. The higher the income, higher is life expectancy. This is clearly the first observation that we can make. In the early 1800’s there isn’t a big difference between all the countries around the world except for United Kingdom showing the highest rate of income per person vs. life expectancy. The rest of the world is concentrated on a life expectancy level between 25 to 40 years old while the income per person is fluctuating from $500 to $2700. From the Industrial revolution, we start observing consequent differences between industrial countries and the others. The Industrial countries start to develop their medical environment, people earns more and more money and increase their standards of leaving which implies directly on life expectancy who grows consequently.

However, when you look into the details we can see, than during special periods like wars (World War 1 & 2) the life expectancy in the concerned countries is decreasing while the income per person stays roughly at the same level.

What is really shocking is that through the years the entire world succeeded to improve the level of both variables except most of the African Continent who shows really low level of life expectancy and low level of income. What is also known in these countries is that they are suffering a lot from HIV virus that affects a huge percentage of the population and this is a dramatic fact. If you take for example the case of South Africa in 2010, it has higher level of income than China but life expectancy is about 52 versus 72.

Finally, what is also...