HowMuch.net, a company that creates visualizations to help people understand money, has created a data visualization arranging countries according to their government debt. The graphic uses data from the International Monetary Fund in April 2021 to show the debt-to-Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ratio, which compares what a country owes with what it produces, for every country in the world. This ratio indicates a country’s ability to pay back its debts, so the bigger the debt-to-GDP ratio is, the less able a country is to pay back debts. Japan, Sudan, and Greece have some of the biggest debt-to-GDP ratios in the world, with ratios of 257, 212, and 210 percent respectively. Comparatively, Afghanistan, Brunei, and Hong Kong lie on the outer edges of the visualization, with ratios of 9, 2, and 1 percent respectively.
Visualizing the Size of Government Debt in Countries Around the World
