By The Visual Capitalist

This week’s installment of The Distillery comes from The Visual Capitalist and is a pair of well-designed charts that illustrate the world GDP and debt in single charts.  The first visual provides the world GDP by breaking down the relative share of the global economy by nation.  Continents are also grouped together and sorted by color.  The second visual is the world’s debt by nation.

(Global GDP)

(World Debt)

The numbers that stand out the most, when comparing the two graphics:

• The United States constitutes 23.3% of the world economy but 29.1% of world debt. It’s debt-to-GDP ratio is 103.4% using IMF figures.
• Japan makes up only 6.18% of total economic production, but has amounted 19.99% of global debt.
• China, the world’s second largest economy (and largest by other measures), accounts for 13.9% of production. They only have 6.25% of world debt and a debt-to-GDP ratio of 39.4%.
• 7 of the 15 countries with the most total debt are European. Together, excluding Russia, the European continent holds over 26% of total world debt.

Combining the debt of the United States, Japan, and Europe together accounts for 75% of total global debt.