No 141: Japan no longer world's second biggest economy

A LONG predicted event has finally happened: China is now officially the world's second biggest economy.

For more details read:

http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/japanese-economy-slips-to-third-in-the-world-skynews-4d6c38cb3df5.html


 This news might not seem so surprising given that Japan has had low or even negative growth over the past ten years, while China has averaged 10%.

Nevertheless, the gap between the two countries' GDP 30 or 40 years ago was huge. Click on the next link, and you can see an interactive graph I made on gapminder that shows this:

www.bit.ly/cDtgEa

Here is a screenshot of what it looks like:

Try dragging back the arrow at the bottom to 1960 then press play to see how GDP changed. You can also click on other countries in the panel on the right to see how they did in comparison.


It's worth having a good play around with this - we will be using the gapminder software a lot in my classes during the next school year.