If the World Economy Were the Solar System

How do you measure the wealth of nations? Two ways: compare national GDPs, or size up per-capita GDPs. Those two categories don't necessarily correspond: countries can be rich, but their citizens poor – or vice versa.





The U.S. is the Sun, because it is both the world's biggest economy (national GDP over $18.5 trillion) and has the highest per-capita income of the world's largest economies (the average annual income in the U.S. is just over $57,000).

The nine planets in the Solar System (yes, Planet Nine... even if we don’t see you, we are looking at you) symbolize the nine next-biggest economies in the world. In two ways:

Firstly, their distance to the Sun expresses the difference in per-capita GDP. The UK, with the second-biggest per-capita GDP, is Mercury, the planet closest to the Sun. Following the planets in clockwise order, we end at Planet Nine/India: furthest from the Sun, smallest per-capita GDP.

Secondly, the size of the planets reflects the size of overall GDP. China is Uranus, 7th planet from the Sun, because it is 7 places behind the U.S. in per-capita GDP. But it is the second-biggest heavenly body on this map, because of the huge size of its total GDP. Third in size is Japan, last is Brazil: Uranus is closer than Planet Nine (because Brazil's per-capita income is higher), but also smaller (because India's total GDP is higher).