Pity Russia’s billionaires

Daily Graph Series

Economist-Style Plot using R

Origin of the Economist plot can be found here. Using a very complicated approach, this plot was replicated by Le Hoang Van. In searching a more simpler method of plotting, this plot can be created by only using ggplot2 as follows:

R Codes for Data Cleaning and Visualization

# Data for ploting: 

dat <- read.csv(text = "Year,Russia,World
1996,0,423
1997,4,220
1998,1,221
1999,0,298
2000,0,322  
2001,8,530
2002,6,466
2003,17,459
2004,25,562
2005,27,664
2006,33,760
2007,53,893
2008,87,1038
2009,32,761
2010,62,949
2011,101,1109
2012,96,1130
2013,110,1317
2014,111,1535
2015,88,1738", header  = TRUE)


# Load some packages: 
# http://people.oregonstate.edu/~hanshumw/Specie%20I.D./Signage%20Backup/FONT%20Officina%20full/
# https://drawar.github.io/posts/dual-y-axis-ggplot2/


library(tidyverse)
myColors <- c("#68382C", "#00A4E6")
my_font <- "Ubuntu Condensed"

# Make a draft: 

ggplot() + 
  annotate("curve", 
           curvature = 0,
           x = 1995.8, 
           xend = 2015.5, 
           y = seq(50, 200, 50), 
           yend = seq(50, 200, 50),
           color = "gray70", size = 0.7) + 
  annotate("curve", 
           curvature = 0,
           x = 1995.8, 
           xend = 2015.5, 
           y = 0, 
           yend = 0,
           color = "gray30", size = 0.7) + 
  annotate("curve", 
           curvature = 0,
           x = c(1996, 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015), 
           xend = c(1996, 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015),
           y = 0, 
           yend = -5, color = "gray30", size = 0.7) + 
  annotate("text", 
           x = c(1996, 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015),
           y = 0, 
           label = c("1996", "2000", "05", "10", "15"), 
           family = my_font, 
           size = 5,
           color = "grey20", vjust = 2) + 
  geom_line(data = dat, aes(Year, Russia), color = myColors[1], size = 1.7) + 
  geom_line(data = dat, aes(Year, World / 10), color = myColors[2], size = 1.7) + 
  scale_y_continuous(limits = c(-15, 215)) + 
  scale_x_continuous(limits = c(1995.5, 2016.5), breaks = seq(1996, 2015, 1)) + 
  theme(panel.grid.major = element_blank()) + 
  theme(panel.grid.minor = element_blank()) + 
  annotate("text", x = 1995.5, y = seq(0, 200, 50), label = seq(0, 200, 50), 
           hjust = 0.7, color = myColors[1], size = 5.5, family = my_font) + 
  annotate("text", x = 2015.5, y = seq(0, 200, 50), label = seq(0, 2000, 500), 
           hjust = -0.2, color = myColors[2], size = 5.5, family = my_font) + 
  theme(axis.title = element_blank(), axis.text = element_blank()) + 
  theme(axis.ticks = element_blank()) + 
  theme(panel.background = element_rect(fill = "white")) + 
  theme(plot.background = element_rect(fill = "grey90")) + 
  annotate("text", x = 1995.5, y = 210, label = "Number in Russia", vjust = -1, 
           hjust = 0.15, size = 5, family = my_font, color = myColors[1], fontface = "bold") + 
  annotate("text", x = 2015.5, y = 210, label = "Rest of world", vjust = -1, 
           hjust = 0.6, size = 5, family = my_font, color = myColors[2], fontface = "bold") + 
  theme(plot.margin = unit(c(1.2, 0.7, 1, 0.7), "cm")) + 
  labs(title = "Off the rich list", 
       subtitle = "Russia billionaires", 
       caption = "Source: Russia’s billionaires\nD.Treisman, American Economic Review (2016)") + 
  theme(plot.title = element_text(family = my_font, size = 22, vjust = 4)) + 
  theme(plot.subtitle = element_text(family = my_font, size = 14, vjust = 6, color = "grey20")) + 
  theme(plot.caption = element_text(family = my_font, size = 12, vjust = -5, color = "grey30", hjust = 0)) 

library(grid)
grid.rect(x = 0.015, y = 0.93, hjust = 1, vjust = 0, gp = gpar(fill = "#e5001c", lwd = 0))  
grid.rect(x = 1, y = 1 - 0.005, hjust = 1, vjust = 0,  gp = gpar(fill = "#e5001c", lwd = 0))