More on the Motion Chart

I posted a motion chart regarding percent GDP spend on military and GDP per capita. While I discussed a little of what caught my eye at first glance on the visualization, there is more that I wanted to briefly address. I removed a large portion of the countries in order to clean it up a little. I kept all European and North American nations, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, and South Korea. Two topics I want to discuss about these nations are the economic differences between eastern and western European nations, and the similarities in the economies of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea.

Below is the image of the chart described above. You can see the western European (represented by blue), eastern European (yellow-green), North American (light green), Australia and New Zealand (yellow), and Japan and South Korea (red). As you can tell, with the exception of the United States, that Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Canada all not only lie within the western European nations, but have almost identical reactions. So much so that if indicated by the same color, would be indistinguishable. This can be attributed to how closely their economies rely on the same variables. Next I am going to try and create a similar chart going back decades to observe how much slower nations react to economic changes on different continents. 

When watching the motion chart, the differences between eastern (represented by blue in the image below) and western European nations (represented by red), in terms of GDP per capita, are astonishing. While it is probably no surprise that there is a difference, I know that I would not have expected as defined clusters as the two seen throughout the sixteen years of data. What causes this difference? Much can be attributed to decades of communism in the eastern nations. While they have moved from this form of economy, the effects are obviously still seen today. 

It would be expected that over the next few decades that these eastern European nations will begin to migrate up the chart and join those the western Europe.

To see the motion chart of 130 nations see my visualization from last week.