They Mapped Every Dollar Earned on Earth Since 1850

National GDP statistics are blunt instruments. They tell you China's total economic output but nothing about the chasm between Shanghai and rural Gansu. They report Nigeria's growth rate without revealing that Lagos alone accounts for a third of the country's economy. This dataset shatters those national averages into 0.5-degree grid cells covering every inhabited patch of the planet, revealing the spatial anatomy of wealth from 1850 through projected futures under five climate scenarios.

The historical reconstruction alone is a landmark achievement. By fusing national accounts data with subnational indicators and population grids, the authors produced spatially explicit GDP estimates stretching back to the mid-19th century. The result is a time-lapse of industrialization visible at the grid level: watch economic mass accumulate along coastlines, river valleys, and rail corridors; see the explosive urbanization of East Asia; track the slow economic hollowing of rural Europe. The dataset makes visible what economic historians have long argued in prose.

But the real power lies in the future projections. Under five Shared Socioeconomic Pathway scenarios, the dataset maps how economic geography could transform by 2100. SSP5 — the fossil-fueled development path — concentrates wealth in already-wealthy grids. SSP3 — regional rivalry — fragments it. The differences are not academic. Every climate adaptation model, every infrastructure investment decision, every migration projection depends on assumptions about where economic output will be. This dataset replaces assumption with data.