Our World in Data, Distribution of Gross Domestic Product by Economic Sector, 1869 to 1899

This is a snapshot of an interactive 100% stacked area graph from Our World on Data, based on data from Herrendorf et al. (2014). It visualizes the three economic sectors (services, industry, and agriculture) as a proportion of he Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the United States between 1839 and 1899. On the website's interactive graph, the viewer can adjust the end date up to 2016 and display the exact percentages by hovering over each section. This graph captures the shift from an agrarian economy to an industrial- and service-driven one as the agricultural proportion declined from 42.6% of the GDP in 1839 to 17.7% in 1899, while the industrial porportion rose from 19.4% to 35.3% during the same period. This trend began sometime in the first half of the nineteenth century and marked the rise of sustained growth in the United States' GDP.