What: GDP per capita, chain linked volumes (2010) in euro
When: 2004-2020
Where: Current EU members (as of 2021)
Is the economic gap between new and old EU members closing?
Tag Archives: Dot chart
Are there any places where the climate is recently getting colder?
The question arises because we’re having Climate Change and not Global Warming.
Only 6 weather stations in the world have a statistically significant negative temperature trend since 2000.
Most of them are located around the equator, one is in Antarctica.
There are 391 weather stations that have at least 5 full years of data since 2000 and which have a significant trend (p-value is less than 5%).
In 385 of those stations, the temperature is rising.
When: 2000 January – 2020 December.
Where: Weather stations that have at least 5 full years of data during the period in question and have a significant regression coefficient (p-value < 5%).
Source: Global Historical Climatology Network-Monthly (GHCN-M) temperature dataset https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/ghcn-monthly
Is freedom consistent within a country?
I’ve found five freedom indices measuring various fields of freedom. The question is whether all those measures are consistent within countries, or do they vary a lot?
The answer is in the chart below the chart below – more often they’re consistent than not. Exceptions are in some Muslim countries which do not like moral freedom or democracy – those ratings are low, but they want high economic freedom – so this one particular rating is often high.
What: Freedom indices recalculated to fit the range from 0 to 1, where 1 means best index and 0 means the worst (in 3 out of 5 cases – it’s North Korea)
Index, When, Source:
Democracy Index, 2019, EIU
Human Freedom Index, 2017, The Human Freedom Index 2018: A Global Measurement of Personal, Civil, and Economic Freedom
Economic Freedom Index, 2020, The Heritage Foundation
Moral Freedom Index, 2020, The Foundation for the Advancement of Liberty
Press Freedom Index, 2020, Reporters Without Borders
Where: 172 countries were ranked on at least 3 of these indices.
Is there deforestation?
After zooming in the axis, the constant decrease is clear. I don’t know whether 129 million hectares is a big deal or not, but we were happier if the trend were the opposite. However people are also planting forest, and since they cut more and more, they plant more and more too. Now the rate of planting is less than the rate of cutting, but I believe one day the trend will be reversed.
What: Land used as forest and types of forest. Mind the axis on the left graph which does not start at zero.
When: 1990-2017
Where: The world
Source: FAO
Does reflective happiness correlate with positive emotions?
I have put countries into four categories:
– those which have the most positive emotions (big circle – excited)
– those which have the least positive emotions (small circle – bored)
– those which have the most negative emotions (big square – sad)
– those which have the least negative emotions (small square – chill)
Then I ranked them according to the World Happiness Report. I did not see any serious contradictions between these two data sets, except one country – Lithuania is quite high on happiness score, but very low on positive experiences, so it is the most bored happy country in the world.
What: Positive and Negative emotions indices based on interviews and Happiness index also based on interviews.
When: 2018
Where: 43 countries of the world
Source: Gallup for emotions and WHR for happiness
Did membership in EU helped new countries to grow their GDP faster?
The graph tells me that further analysis would be purposeless. For most countries, which entered EU in 2004 the fifth year in the union was the time of global crisis. Would have they been better without EU? Well, this is a topic for a deeper analysis.
What: The graph shows 3-year moving averages of annual GDP per capita growth, with value at year 0 (entering the EU) subtracted from all the data series for visual purposes. The “average” is a simple average of all growths without the topmost and downmost values.
When: Years are different for each country depending on its date of joining the European Union.
Where: Countries joined the EU in 2004 and later.
Source: ES
