Afloat

Afloat FIXTURE DATA

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CountryAvg age

Each ship is one country. Its people stand by age: children at the front, adults in the middle, seniors at the back.
More children tip the front down; more seniors tip the back down.
A ship floats lower the more children and seniors each working-age adult supports.
Afloat exaggerates the tilt about 20 times so you can read it at a glance.

Population by age: UN World Population Prospects 2024, CC BY 3.0 IGO. UN estimates run to 2023; medium-variant projections follow.
Afloat works out average age as a mean across single years of age.
GDP: Maddison Project Database 2023, chained to 2025 with World Bank growth rates, CC BY 4.0. 2011 international dollars. Afloat shows GDP for the whole world only. After 2025 Afloat estimates the figure: world GDP per person aged 15 to 64 keeps its 1990 to 2025 average growth, multiplied by the UN's projected number of people aged 15 to 64.
World Map coastlines: Natural Earth 1:110m land, public domain, via world-atlas, in the Equal Earth projection. Each ship floats at a point inside its country and moves aside where countries crowd together.
Rulers before independence: ICOW Colonial History dataset.
Flags: flag-icons, MIT licence.

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1950

World population —

Children— Youth & adults— Seniors—

Total world GDP —

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