Source page: McKinsey & Company
Commentary
A granular look at human progress
Economic Development | Healthcare
January 17, 2023 – Davos—the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting—is in full swing through January 20. All this week, our daily charts will focus on some of the key themes of the event, including resilience, sustainability, reimagining globalization, inclusion, and space. For more, see “McKinsey and the World Economic Forum 2023.”
Measuring human progress requires an up-close approach. The McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) portioned the world into 40,000 microregions to assess the development of human health and economic prosperity over the past two decades. Chair of insights and ecosystems and chair of MGI Sven Smit and coauthors found notable gains in life expectancy and GDP per capita in large swaths of the globe, though some parts of sub-Saharan Africa experienced declines in economic prosperity.
To read the article, see “Pixels of progress: A granular look at human development around the world,” December 7, 2022.
Interactive
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Visual form
Granular microregion map.
Layout / body structure
The chart is structured as a high-resolution geographic view that breaks the world into many small development units instead of relying on country-level averages. Reader scans the map region by region, using the fine-grained layout to compare local progress patterns that would disappear in a coarser national view.
What is being compared
It compares changes in human development across microregions, especially life expectancy and GDP per capita, over the past two decades.
Measurement system
The chart uses geographically encoded development outcomes rather than a single shared axis. Color or category grouping carries the comparison across the map, while the framing highlights the underlying microregional scale of 40,000 units.
Visible structure inside the graphic
The main internal pieces are the dense set of microregions, the color groupings that distinguish stronger and weaker progress, and the broad geographic outline that lets the viewer compare one part of the world with another. The structure is deliberately granular so local divergence is visible inside larger regions.
Main takeaway from the visual
The page makes human progress look uneven at a much finer scale than a country average would suggest. Large parts of the world show gains in health and prosperity, but the visual also preserves pockets where economic progress lags or reverses, especially within parts of sub-Saharan Africa.
Key standout values or extremes
The headline structural value is the division of the world into 40,000 microregions. The sharpest geographic contrast in the article framing is between broad gains in life expectancy and GDP per capita across many regions and the weaker economic-prosperity outcomes in parts of sub-Saharan Africa.
Controls / sequence, when applicable
The visible controls change the chart view while keeping the same graphic structure.
Companion media, when applicable
There is no separate companion audio or video; the chart is the full visual on this page.