Cities & Wealth

Watch the rural and the urban worlds drift apart as wealth rises. The cloud tilts up to the right because the two move together — that’s the shape of a strong correlation.

The two, blended into one map

Same data, a different read. Instead of one metric as colour and the other as bubbles, the two blend: each country is shaded by where it falls on both at once — so the map shows where urban population and gdp per capita are high together, and where they pull apart.

How strongly do they move together?

On the blend, dark teal marks countries that are both urban and rich; the off-colours are the stories. A green-leaning country is urban without the broad prosperity — often a resource economy whose cities outran its incomes — while a blue-leaning one is wealthy yet surprisingly rural. In Scatter the cloud climbs to the right, loosely but clearly: city life and wealth pull each other along, with enough exceptions to be interesting.

Who fits the pattern — and who breaks it

On the scatter, the rule-followers sit tight to the dashed line; the rule-breakers fly far from it. On the left, the countries that most clearly follow the relationship; on the right, the ones that most defy it.

Understand the underlying numbers

Keep exploring