The 60-year downward trend of economic growth in the industrialized countries of the world

Abstract

This report, using data from a range of authoritative sources, studies the long-term postwar economic growth of the industrialised North and shows that this has fallen continuously, with only brief and limited interruptions, since at least the early 1960s. The trend is extremely strong and includes all major Northern economies without exception. It is confirmed by both Purchasing-Power-Parity (PPP) and a range of standard real GDP measures, by a variety of weightings of the growth rates, and a variety of aggregations of different countries. The Newly-Industrialised Countries (NICS), after early high growth rates, joined the general trend of other industrialised countrieds after the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997. It is thus an extremely well-confirmed historical trend. Recent data show no evidence of any post-COVID reversal. These results sheds new light on the current difficulties of the world economy and have many implications. They conflict with any idea that Secular Stagnation as it is increasingly referred to even in mainstream literature, originates in some recent upset such as the 2008 crash, or in the incidence of, or problems created by, a putative new régime of accumulation such as neoliberalism or financialisation. In fact, the roots of the present crisis lie in a long historical process which set in very shortly into the ‘Golden Age’ of postwar expansion.