The bar chart illustrates the average annual growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) across three distinct categories of nations – wealthy countries, globalisers, and non-globalisers – over a period of four decades from the 1960s to the 1990s.
Overall, while wealthy countries experienced a consistent decline in GDP growth over the four decades, globalisers saw a steady and significant increase. Although wealthy countries started with the highest growth rates in the 1960s, they were eventually overtaken by globalisers, who became the dominant group from the 1980s onwards. In contrast, non-globalisers showed a fluctuating trend, with their growth peaking in the 1970s before falling sharply in the subsequent years.
In the 1960s, wealthy countries had the highest annual GDP growth at about 4.8%. This figure was much higher than globalisers (around 1.4%) and non-globalisers (2.4%). By the 1970s, the growth rate for wealthy countries fell to 3%, which was similar to the level of globalisers after their significant increase. During this decade, non-globalisers saw their growth rise to approximately 3.3%, reaching the highest position on the chart.
From the 1980s to the 1990s, the GDP growth of wealthy countries continued to go down steadily to about 2%. However, globalisers experienced a dramatic rise, reaching a peak of nearly 5% in the 1990s, making them the leading group. In contrast, the group of non-globalisers showed a negative trend. Their figures dropped sharply to about 1% in the 1980s before slightly recovering to nearly 1.5% in the final decade, which was consistently the lowest growth among the three groups.