Weekly Viz 2020-11-23

Why America’s debt doesn’t stop growing

About Makeover Monday

MakeoverMonday is a social data project: “Each week we post a link to a chart, and its data, and then you rework the chart. Maybe you retell the story more effectively, or find a new story in the data. We’re curious to see the different approaches you all take. Whether it’s a simple bar chart or an elaborate infographic, we encourage everyone of all skills to partake. Together we can have broader conversations about and with data.”

Starting from Jan 08, 2018, I decided to put aside one hour on Monday weekly to create some visualization and find some insights from the data.

The datasets are published each week at: MakeoverMonday Datasets.

Makeover Monday 20201123

This week’s dataset is about US total public debt and GDP since 1960s. As the original article shows, at the beginning of 2000s, US GDP was still almost $5 Trillion higher than its total public debt. But ever since the financial crisis in 2008, the debt number has been surging, with a drop and later slow growth of GDP. As a result, since 2013, we have seen total public debt surpassing GDP. And the recent COVID pandemic makes the deficit even larger.

My Visualization

I combined line chart with gantt chart to make this simple and clear chart this week.

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Please notice that all the visualizations are designed for desktop view, so it is recommended to view them on a desktop device.

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Insights

• The GDP surplus has been relatively consistent in late 1990s to 2008;
• But due to the financial crisis in 2008, the debt number has been surging, with a drop and later slow growth of GDP. As a result, we saw total public debt surpassed GDP the first time in 2012Q4;
• And the recent COVID pandemic is making the deficit even larger.

Follow this link to find more weekly vizzes :)