global living conditions

The map we need if we want to think about how global living conditions are changing

September 12, 2018 by Max Roser Recomendado pela AMICOR Maria Inês Reinert Azambuja

Our World in Data presents the empirical evidence on global development in entries dedicated to specific topics.

This blog post draws on data and research discussed in our entry on World Population Growth.

Our mission here at Our World in Data is to show how living conditions around the world are changing.

To show global data it is convenient to use a map. But despite the popularity and familiarity of world maps, they can mislead our understanding of how living conditions around the world are changing. They are made for a different purpose; geographical maps show us where the world’s land masses are and where country borders run. They don’t show us where the people are.

If we want to show where the world’s people are we need a population cartogram, a geographical presentation of the world where the size of the countries are not drawn according to the distribution of land, but according to the distribution of people.

So I spent the last few weekends making this cartogram for the world population in 2018.