Monday, March 10, 2014

Real GDP Growth per Capita (Musical Tribute)

The following chart shows the 20 year moving average of annual real GDP growth per capita.


Click to enlarge.

This musical tribute is dedicated to the bulls.



Oh, I believe in yesterday

Source Data:
St. Louis Fed: Custom Chart

5 comments:

Stagflationary Mark said...

20 years is more than enough time to filter out most of the short-term cyclical noise (short-term expansions/contractions) and leave us with a reasonable long-term trend.

Anonymous said...

I assume the pre-1970 trend was fairly stable at ~ 2.5%. Ah , the wonders of neoliberal structural transformation !

You should call this graph "Bob" - for Robert Gordon.

Stagflationary Mark said...

Anonymous,

Here is the annual data.

I dropped it into Excel so that I could offer you some statistics. There were clearly lots of ups and downs. The median from 1930 to 1970 was 2.8%. The average was 2.3% (pulled down by the Great Depression).

2.8% these days is a pipe dream. Sigh.

Anonymous said...

OK , thanks. That's about what I thought.

The raw data makes it tough to grasp intuitively , but the long-term trend is clear , as shown by your curve-fitting.

Wish FRED gave us a way to do moving averages....

Stagflationary Mark said...

Anonymous,

Wish FRED gave us a way to do moving averages....

If everyone could do it easily, then I'd have to reduce the annual subscription cost of my blog from $0 to something even less. Just think how deflationary that would be.

Tongue firmly in cheek but not entirely joking of course. Go figure.