Overall the world of user generated data seems to be a fairly rich place. Which is not altogether surprising since the ability to even create a Google placemark (access and ability to use a computer) suggests a certain level of affluence in a world where half the population lives on less that $2.50 a day. That's one reason why much of the globe doesn't have any placemarks at all.
Global Map of Rich and Poor
So it makes most sense to more closely examine East Asian countries of Japan, South Korea (note the clear difference with North Korea) and Taiwan are mostly spotted with "rich" placemarks. Likewise in China (which doesn't have many placemarks in general, a topic for another posting) "rich" is associated with the wealthy coastal regions such as the economic powerhouse of Shanghai, Fuzhou and Ghangzhou.
East Asian Map of Ric
Moving westward one sees that Europe is much more placemarked (is that even a word?) in general than Asia. But within this, there are interesting patterns as one moves south, east and north from the historic core of Europe. France, the Benelux countries, Germany and Italy systematically have more placemarks referencing rich than poor. But as one moves into the areas of Spain/Portugal and Greece/Turkey, the pattern becomes more varied. There are both fewer placemarks in general and those that do exist are more likely to have references to poor. Perhaps the most striking example is Britain with the core region around London tagged as rich and as one moves northward there is an increasing amount of placemarks referencing poor.
European Map of Ric
The pattern in the North American context is much less clear. One can see the Northeast (stretching from Massachusetts to DC) is primarily tagged as rich. This tendency toward rich is mostly maintained along the entire coastline. Moving inland, the patterns become much less clear, with the rest of the country seeming to be a nearly equal combination of rich and poor.
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