GDP and GDP per head

Spanish Economic Growth, 1850–2015, 2017

, in which the growth trend varied significantly (Table 2.1). 1 Thus, in the phase of fastest growth, the Golden Age (1950-1974), GDP grew at 6.3% annually, four and a half times faster than during the previous hundred years and twice faster than over 1974-2007, while the Great Recession represented a fall in real GDP between 2007 and 2013 (8%), and the 2007 level had not been recovered by 2015. Gross Domestic Income (GDI), that is, income accruing to those living in Spain, as opposed to output produced in Spain, shadows closely GDP evolution. A look at the evolution of output and expenditure components of GDP provides valuable information about its determinants. Changes in the composition of demand are highly revealing of the deep transformation experienced by Spain's economy over the last two centuries.

1994

2004

Over the past two hundred years, countries have varied widely in their patterns of economic growth. In the nineteenth century, the United Kingdom was the leading industrialized country, with Germany and France catching up, and then the United States leapfrogged the European countries around the turn of the century. In the period after World War II, per capita income in Japan and Germany increased dramatically. Out of these spurts of growth emerges a long-term historical trend: the United States and other countries that now belong to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have seen a persistent increase in per capita income of roughly 2 percent per annum over the last century. Yet during the same period, other countries have continued to languish in poverty. This marked difference in economic performance is not accidental, for in some countries major forces of growth were set in motion that were lacking in other countries. The problem of economic growth has ...

Economic Growth in Europe since 1945, 1996

CEPR: Economic History (Topic), 2020

The current productivity slowdown has stimulated research on the causes of growth. We investigate here the proximate determinants of long-term growth in Spain. Over the last 170 years output per hour worked raised nearly 24-fold dominating GDP growth, while hours worked per person shrank by one-fourth and population trebled. Half of labour productivity growth resulted from capital deepening, one-third from total factor productivity, and labour quality contributed the rest. In phases of acceleration (the 1920s and 1954-85), TFP was labour productivity’s main driver complemented by capital deepening. Since Spain’s accession to the European Union (1985), labour productivity has sharply decelerated as capital deepening slowed down and TFP stagnated. Up to the Global Financial Crisis (2008) GDP growth mainly resulted from an increase in hours worked per person and, to a less extent, from sluggish labour productivity coming mostly from weak capital deepening. Institutional constraints hel...

2006

Long run economic progress in modern Spain is assessed in this paper and its comparative performance placed in historical perspective. Over one and a half centuries, income per person rose 15 times. Three main phases can be established: 1850-1950, 1951-1974 and 1975-2000. The finding of growth continuity between mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth century is at odds with the widespread view of a nineteenth century of failure and a successful twentieth century. Spain underperformed in the long run mostly due to its sluggish growth in the hundred years up to 1950. Higher destruction of human capital than of physical capital during the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath help explain her weaker post-World War II performance. Catching up took place in the late twentieth century, in which the years 1959-74 stand out. Structural change contributed significantly to growth acceleration while lack of exposition to international competition represents a recurrent element of retardation.

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament d’Economia i d’Història Econòmica. UHE Working Paper 2013_06, 2012 , 2013

The article presents and discusses long-run series of per capita GDP and life expectancy for Italy and Spain (1861-2008). After refining the available estimates in order to make them comparable and with the avail of the most up-to-date researches, the main changes in the international economy and in technological and socio-biological regimes are used as analytical frameworks to re-assess the performances of the two countries; then structural breaks are searched for and Granger causality between the two variables is investigated. The long-run convergence notwithstanding, significant cyclical differences between the two countries can be detected: Spain began to modernize later in GDP, with higher volatility in life expectancy until recent decades; by contrast, Italy showed a more stable pattern of life expectancy, following early breaks in per capita GDP, but also a negative GDP break in the last decades. Our series confirm that, whereas at the early stages of development differences in GDP tend to mirror those in life expectancy, this is no longer true at later stages of development, when, if any, there seems to be a negative correlation between GDP and life expectancy: this finding is in line with the thesis of a non-monotonic relation between life expectancy and GDP and is supported by tests of Granger causality.

2017

But how did GDP per head gains affect economic well-being? Within the existing national accounts framework, Sitglitz et al. (2009: 23-25) recommend to look at net rather than gross measures, in order to take into account the depreciation of capital goods. Net National Disposable Income (NNDI) measures income accruing to Spanish nationals, rather than production in Spain, and also accounts for capital consumption. NNDI provides, therefore, a more accurate measure of the impact of economic growth on average incomes than GDP. In Fig. 5.1, a long-term decline in the NNDI share of GDP is observed. The reason is that as the stock of capital gets larger and its composition shifts from assets with long lives but low returns (i.e. residential construction) to shorter life assets but with higher returns (i.e. machinery), capital consumption increases. The integration of Spain into the global economy since the last quarter of the twentieth century accentuated this process. Nonetheless, it can be noticed that per capita NNDI grows in parallel with GDP per head, although at a slower pace from 1960 onwards, that resulted in its 13-fold increase over 1850-2015, against 16-fold for per capita GDP (Fig. 5.2 and Table 5.1).

Working Papers in Economic History, 2006

Long run economic progress in modern Spain is assessed in this paper and its comparative performance placed in historical perspective. Over one and a half centuries, income per person rose 15 times. Three main phases can be established: 1850-1950, 1951-1974 and 1975-2000. The finding of growth continuity between mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth century is at odds with the widespread view of a nineteenth century of failure and a successful twentieth century. Spain underperformed in the long run mostly due to its sluggish growth in the hundred years up to 1950. Higher destruction of human capital than of physical capital during the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath help explain her weaker post-World War II performance. Catching up took place in the late twentieth century, in which the years 1959-74 stand out. Structural change contributed significantly to growth acceleration while lack of exposition to international competition represents a recurrent element of retardation.

2011

Economic growth is one of the most important issues discussed worldwide. Its dynamics over time seem to be crucial from the perspective of the ability of poor countries to catch up with highly developed economies. As can be easily noticed in world statistics, both GDP per capita and GDP growth levels vary substantially across countries.