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Is peace a question of money?

This paper visualization shows the relation between the wealth of a country (gross domestic product per capita; GDP) and its peacefulness (global peace index; GPI).

The GPI uses 24 indicators that can be categorized into militarization, societal safety and security, and ongoing domestic and international conflict. Countries are assigned a score between 1=peaceful and 5=less peaceful. The data assessed in the year 2008 include 140 countries.

In the visualization, each country is represented by a cylinder made out of paper. The GPI score of a country is mapped to the height of a paper cylinder. The shorter the cylinder, the more peaceful the country according to the GPI data set. The area of each cylinder represents the GDP of the according country. The more area a cylinder takes up, the higher the country's GDP per capita. Cylinders are roughly arranged according to the geographical location of the country they represent and are labeled with the country name to ease comparison.

The visualization shows that cylinders tend to be wide and short or narrow and long – peacefulness seems to be a matter of wealth. Furthermore it gives an overview of the geographic distribution of peace and money. For example, countries in the northwest appear to be richer and more peaceful.

Data source: Vision of Humanity, Global Peace Index 2008

Material: paper

Special thanks to Marian Dörk for his creative advice, practical help, and constant critique.

Submitted to the Infosthetics Competition, see the other submissions including the winner here.