Largest Government Debts for Our World’s Largest Economies (2017)
GDP-to-Debt Ratio by Country
Do Large Economies Mean Larger Debts? Not Necessarily.
One might suspect that our world’s largest economies are the ones who hold the most debt – however, many of the world’s largest economic players proportionally hold debts similar to those with countries of smaller economic scale, such as Austria or Canada. One notable exception, however, would be Japan. Despite having the third-largest economy in the world, its proportion of debt dwarfs that of peer nations like Germany or the United Kingdom.
Reflecting on Different Visualization Methods
It is challenging to choose one, simple narrative to convey through a graphic. It is tempting to include extra information because you think it may tell a more compelling story or provide useful context, only to realize that you have instead made the graphic more cluttered and the purpose muddled.
Each approach certainly has its pros and cons: the bar chart from the OECD allows us to focus on a very small subset of data, and allows us to draw easy, direct comparisons between nations. However, this bar chart does not fully capture the scale of the differences between each nation, and it can feel a bit overwhelming when a reader doesn’t quite know where to focus their attention. Additionally, it is nearly impossible to fully grasp the changes over time. I do appreciate it for its simplicity, and of all three visualizations, it makes the clearest point that many nations are spending more than they earn.
The multiple line graphs approach makes it much easier to focus on the intricacies of each nation’s development over time. The scale feels consistent, and it allows the reader to focus on what interests them the most. What is particularly compelling about this visualization is how consistent many countries’ debt-to-GDP ratios have been over time; very few have taken on mounting amounts of debt, highlighting the contrast between these nations and their more spendthrift counterparts. However, there is simply too much data to take in, and the gaps in data feel more glaring than they would through another visualization method. It was also challenging to organize, although I admit I am still learning how to properly use Flourish.
I ultimately chose the line graph with highlights because I felt it allowed me to focus on drawing direct comparisons between peer economies while still using other nations as useful touchstones for comparison. In a sea of gray, several countries are allowed to stand out in a way that was more challenging to display using either the OECD’s bar charts or the grid of line charts. Using a similar color scheme to display the nations who have the largest GDPs (we do not have data on China, from what I could tell) allows me to categorize them together, but a brighter red for Japan helps distinguish it as the outlier; Japan’s proportion of debt relative to its economic growth is jarring when compared with other nations. Additionally, adjusting the thickness of each line and removing any distracting background noise, such as gridlines, makes the background data points a more subtle anchor.
In the future, and with the right data set, a Hans Rosling graph might be more effective than a simple line graph at conveying changes over time. I will note that this exercise emphasized the value of clean, well-organized data. Creating the final visual was impossible with the initial .csv file from the OECD due to its organization – only after manually reorganizing the data myself did Flourish recognize the input values I hoped to provide. I had not necessarily thought about the limitations of the data itself prior to the exercise, nor how others may clean it to suit their individual needs (for example, this OECD data was obtained from their own “National Accounts at a Glance”, but the exact data they used for their calculations is buried beneath a mountain of other information), but this will be an excellent flag as I begin to gather research for my final project.