MAP: These 7 Tiny Orange Splotches Are Responsible For A Quarter Of US GDP

[FarCenter]

We recently posted Reddit user Alexandr Trubetskoy's map showing that half of all U.S. GDP comes from just 23 metropolitan areas.

Trubetskoy went a step further and broke all American economic activity down into quartiles in this map:

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/map-us-gdp-quartile-concentration-2014-2

The metro areas of New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Chicago, Houston, Dallas, and Los Angeles account for 25% of US GDP.

[elleng]

1. Interesting, but what do we PRODUCE in the DC Metro area???

[temporary311]

2. Well, when congress is in session...

copious amounts of bullshit.

[elleng]

3. Right, so I guess that's why the gardens in and around DC look so good!!!

[MrScorpio]

7. That's Virginia

DC is across the river.

[elleng]

12. I said, 'In and around,' ya know!

and the asserted GDP includes Virginia and MD suburbs of DC.

[MrScorpio]

13. I know

I miss my old stompin' grounds

[elleng]

15. And we miss you!

[FarCenter]

4. Gross Domestic Product is mainly a measure of consumption

A fully equivalent definition is that GDP (Y) is the sum of final consumption expenditure (FCE), gross capital formation (GCF), and net exports (X – M).

Y = FCE + GCF+ (X − M)

FCE can then be further broken down by three sectors (households, governments and non-profit institutions serving households) and GCF by five sectors (non-financial corporations, financial corporations, households, governments and non-profit institutions serving households). The advantage of this second definition is that expenditure is systematically broken down, firstly, by type of final use (final consumption or capital formation) and, secondly, by sectors making the expenditure, whereas the first definition partly follows a mixed delimitation concept by type of final use and sector.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_domestic_product

[seattledo]

8. A tremendous amount of help for the people

So you don't appreciate what they do for us?

[elleng]

14. seattledo,

I lived in DC for 20+ years, worked for the Fed Govt, am now a Federal retiree living in MD. I surely appreciate what we 'bureaucrats' did for us all, but we 'produced' more paperwork than concrete stuff.

We surely consume a lot!

[HereSince1628]

5. IOW Urban megopoli with 24% of population have 25% of GDP????

Frankly, that doesn't look remarkable at all.

Considering the manner in which Financial Industries HQ's are usually in urban areas and Financials make up such a large part of the economy...I'd say there is little evidence of greater per capita productivity for urban economies.

[FarCenter]

6. I get more like 21% of the population for the 7 MSAs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Metropolitan_Statistical_Areas

[hfojvt]

9. thanks, but 21% producing 25% doesn't sound so amazing

not like 7 producing 25%

Back in 1989 I did a study of some midwestern states. I was kinda surprised that the population of the largest metro area was about 50% of the state population in almost all of the states.

That may be less true in larger states with multiple large cities.

[HereSince1628]

10. I think I ended up with 23.7% I think it doesn't change the point...

Sources of population estimates for these areas vary in what is incorporated and I think both your number and my number are close to each other...mine came from wiki estimates of metro-areas rather than MSAs.

But consider the largest parts of the economy, they mostly are concentrated in megopoli.

When you consider how concentrated Health Care is in the megopoli and it's 15% and 20% of the economy and it mines wealth from outlying areas.

Same thing is true for Financial/Investment.

Same thing for big Media, and professional sports.

And then there are the corporate/business HQ's.

(yes, you can point to exceptions for each part of the economy)

Then there is social investment that gives megopoli the enormous infrastructural/logistic advantages in productivity.

Considering all of it, the 4% superiority productivity over what might be expected if productivity was geographically uniform across the entire country isn't all that great.

[CatholicEdHead]

11. Around here I saw the Twin Cities, Madison and Milwaukee as big hubs outside Chicago

With blue elsewhere.