---
title: "Chart of the Week: The changing patterns of global income distribution"
description: "Swedish academic Hans Rosling uses advanced graphics and display technology to show how billions of people worldwide have escaped extreme poverty. "
date: "2013-11-08"
authors:
  - name: "Drew DeSilver"
    job_title: "Senior Writer/Editor"
    link: "https://www.pewresearch.org/staff/drew-desilver/"
url: "https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2013/11/08/chart-of-the-week-the-changing-patterns-of-global-income-distribution/"
categories:
  - "Economic Inequality"
  - "Global Economy & Trade"
  - "Global Trade"
---

# Chart of the Week: The changing patterns of global income distribution

As a use of cutting-edge graphics to visualize and explain complex data, it's hard to beat this witty presentation on the [changing patterns of global income distribution](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24835822) by Hans Rosling, a professor of global health at Sweden's Karolinska Institutet. But you really need to see it in motion.

Rosling, who rather aptly calls himself an "edutainer," starts with a chart of individual countries' 2012 per-capita income plotted against average lifespan. Then, in what at times seems like a clip from "Minority Report," Rosling pulls the data backward in time, focuses just on income, collapses the bubbles into four geographic income distributions and then runs them forward. The result: Not just an illustration, but a demonstration of how dramatically extreme poverty has fallen in recent years, especially in Asia, and how the world's income distribution has taken on more of a classic bell-curve shape.

Rosling's entire talk, in which he uses similar 3-D graphics to discuss population growth, life expectancy and other global trends, was broadcast by the BBC Thursday night. It's a fascinating look not just at rapidly changing demographics but at innovative, informative display technology. (Nor is this Rosling's first venture into the realm of high-tech visualization: A few years back he summed up [200 years' worth of socioeconomic history in 200 countries](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo) in just about four minutes.)