Educational, healthcare, and military spending analysis

DATS 6401 Individual Project (Fall semester 2020)

About this project

The aim of this project is to perform an in-depth analysis of educational, healthcare, and military expenditure using Google Visualization API:

  • Data set used covers time period from 2013-2017
  • Data is centered around G20 countries
  • Charts below depict the following relationships:
    1. Comparing spending data to that country's GDP
    2. Comparing the education and health to the overall military spending of the country
    3. Comparing the per person educational/healthcare/military spending to the per person GDP
    4. Fastest growing countries in healthcare and educational spending in fixed value and in percentage
  • Analysis and Conclusion
  • References
  • Some points worth mentioning about the data set:
    1. Although South Korea is part of G20 countries but it was removed from our data set because of missing data values so that is why it will not show up in any graphs below (except for population chart)
    2. Despite my best efforts and research, educational data for G20 countries was not easily available on web so almost half of values in educational graphs are based on interpolation
    3. France, Italy and Germany are part of European Union but their individual data values have also been displayed in figures below

Analysis and Conclusion

The following information was explored after studying the visualizations created above.

  • Population:
    1. China and India are the most populous countries whereas South Korea and Australia are the least populous among G20 coutries between 2013-2017
  • Health Expense as Percentage of GDP:
    1. Out of all G20 countries, United States spends the highest percentage of its GDP on healthcare, followed by France and Germany
    2. On the other hand, Turkey, India and Indonesia respectively spend the lowest percentage of their GDPs on healthcare
  • Education Expense as Percentage of GDP:
    1. Canada spent the highest percentage of its GDP on education, followed by Brazil and South Africa
    2. On the other hand, Japan, India and Indonesia respectively spent the lowest percentage of their GDPs on education sector
  • Military Expense as Percentage of GDP:
    1. Saudi Arabia stands at the top as the highest spender of its GDP in military department, followed by Russian and United States respectively
    2. On the other hand, Argentina, Indonesia and Mexico respectively spent the lowest percentages of their GDPs in military
  • Education and Health to the overall Military spending of the country:
    1. Mean of five year values were used here. Darker bubbles represent higher military spending
    2. Starting from right hand side, we first encounter USA as highest spender in health but relatively average spender on education
    3. On the top Canada stands as highest spender in education and relatively higher to average spender in health
    4. We see (mostly) asian countries clustered in bottom right corner that spend lower budgets in their health and education sectors. Saudi Arabia, highlighed in darkest mode color depicts highest expenditures in military sector
    5. We have another cluster of (mostly) european countries slightly right from middle of graph depicting medium to high spendings in health and education departments
  • Per person Health, Education and Military spending to per person GDP:
    1. Per person GDP expenditure is highest for Australia at $58,167
    2. Per person healthcare spending, USA is at the top with $9,502 and India is at the bottom with $60
    3. Per person education spending, Canada is at the top with $5,720 and India is at the bottom with $61
    4. Per person military spending, Saudi Arabia is at the top with $2,342 and Indonesia is at the bottom with $29
  • Fastest growing countries in healthcare and educational spending in percentage:
    1. The slope of these lines indicate the growth rate
    2. If we look at the lines for health closely, Brazil (orange line) shows highest growth rate of approx 1.49%. On the other hand, Mexico (purple line) shows a negative growth rate (-0.4%)
    3. For education, USA shows the highest growth rate. Japan shows negative growth rate
  • Fastest growing countries in healthcare and educational spending in absolute:
    1. The slope of these lines indicate the growth rate
    2. It is much easier to see that for health, USA (green line) shows highest growth rate in absolute monetary terms whereas European Union (pink line) has negative growth rate
    3. For education, again USA (green line) has the fastest growth rate while European Union (pink line) has negative growth rate

References

Learning material and data set for this project was acquired from the following resources: