“Global Recession?”

James Nicoll had this comment when I pointed out that Africa’s economies were growing:

You know, Africa accounts for about a billion people and Asia another 3.9 billion, for a total of 4.9 billion people or slightly over 70%. Is the “global” recession in fact more of a regional one?

The world population is estimated to be 6.7 Billion.

Asia and India, both currently in growth patterns, represent 60% of the world’s population. Africa represents 15%. So 75% of the world is actually right now currently growing.

However most of Western Europe, parts of North America, and parts of South America are not. So it’s a global lack of growth for 25% of the world’s population.

In terms of news reportage, that has equated to ‘worldwide’ recession and ‘lack of worldwide’ growth.

Interesting.

Here’s a visual of what I’m talking about. In 2007, in the heart of the recession, here’s what the world looked like in terms of growth:

If anyone knows of a 2009 version of this graph, please email me (tobias@tobiasbuckell.com).

Certainly that is a quick way to realize what a tiny keyhole ‘worldwide’ reporting is looking through, in many ways.

Filed under the topic Uncategorized on December 13th 2010 at 2:29 pm. You can subscribe to the RSS feed for this entry to keep track of comments. You can also use to trackback.