Trends in Regional Portions of Global GDP

Source

I quote from the source article in The Atlantic:

(O)ne way to read the graph, very broadly speaking, is that everything to the left of 1800 is an approximation of population distribution around the world.

After 1800 the Industrial Revolution took off in Europe and the United States. The United States and Russia also extended western control over respectively to the west and east. The great depression shows up as a slowing in the divergence between West and East, and the rapid recovery of the West after World War II is represented by an increasing slope on the graph.

The rapid rise of GDP in China and earlier in Japan, combined with the India's more modest growth in recent decades is reflected in the larger share of GDP in the East and the corresponding lower share of GDP in the West.

The graph shows that changes in the relative rate of growth of GDP do occur from time to time, and it is possible that the rapid progress in the East may slow or be shared among other countries, or that the relative decline in the rate of growth in the United States might be reversed.

Thanks to Julianne for pointing this out.