Euro/US GDP Charts
I was curious to see how the UK fares compared to other countries as regards GDP growth. So I pulled in the data from the eurostat site and created some comparative charts for different years. I've also included the US data. This post contains those charts.Let's start pre-crash. I only have 3 years data to hand, which is unfortunate, but nevertheless here is the chart:
/proxy.php?image=https://www.dropbox.com/s/0ni6fdqx99iaqtt/eugdp20042007.png?dl=1&hash=559f6a39ac16c327390ae60792d4743d
We're sort of pottering along at two and bit percent a year, but nothing spectacular. That sort of growth is very likely not far off the long-term average for the UK.
If you're baffled by any of the two letter country codes, you can find a list here:
Interinstitutional style guide — ‘EU-28and candidate countries’
Now the nastiness comes. Here is year 2008, the first year of the so-called "great recession":
/proxy.php?image=https://www.dropbox.com/s/nlb2ot2krnyug7d/eugdp2008.png?dl=1&hash=be04297f911b5558ba35fcd292ece0b9
Estonia, Ireland and Latvia are the big losers there. A bad one for Italy, too. And this is the year when the US suffered the most. Now the next year of the crisis period:
/proxy.php?image=https://www.dropbox.com/s/zo7dwi9ataipkxx/eugdp2009.png?dl=1&hash=35115ad505727106247f6d12cc5ddbb5
Eeks! data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7
That's a terrible year for a lot of countries. We're kind of middlingly bad there, but the Eurozone 18 are faring worse, as are Germany and Italy. Interestingly, the US is already back in growth, albeit slight growth.
This is a cumulative growth chart for the two bad years, 2008 and 2009, so you can get a rough idea of the total impact during the downturn years:
/proxy.php?image=https://www.dropbox.com/s/7sz46ceww6py9it/eugdp20082009c.png?dl=1&hash=7630c0009a2cb865d6630afea195db5f
Now on to sunnier times. Average growth from 2010 onward:
/proxy.php?image=https://www.dropbox.com/s/7gf0ns43qev0x6u/eugdp20102015.png?dl=1&hash=cf0101ec694677bfa6bb58961f4f7743
EL = Greece, by a long margin the worst performer. But Italy's pretty woeful. I hadn't realized how badly they were doing. I knew there was trouble with some of their banks, but the above does not look good at all. And the Euro area ("18") as a whole is performing pretty poorly. As for us, it's pretty much the same sort of growth we had immediately pre-crash.
What I find a touch surprising there is how well the US is doing: approaching 4% average year on year growth. Reading some of the press, you might get the impression that the US is mired in an economic malaise, but 4% a year for us would be great. Maybe they're used to higher than that?
This is the cumulative chart:
/proxy.php?image=https://www.dropbox.com/s/4byukrfrslx67np/eugdp20102015c.png?dl=1&hash=f6aeaaaad14b1046384bc29f6e3eafb1
And finally, the year 2015:
/proxy.php?image=https://www.dropbox.com/s/busphhokqmj4fm1/eugdp2015.png?dl=1&hash=82c6cd53e479d55e12f9a3d44d3a6407
IE = Ireland and that is not a mistake. The official GDP figures show that the Irish economy grew by a quarter in one year! Apparently, this is the result of some shenanigans involving reclassifying assets and corporate inversions (= tax avoidance mechanism). I've been crunching some growth numbers for the US and UK. It does appear that the US economy has tended to grow much more rapidly than the UK economy. For example, if I choose the period from 1985-1994, the average year on year GDP growth rates are:
UK: 3.17%
US: 6.07%
And that has a cumulative compounding effect, so for the entire period this is the total growth of the two countries:
UK: 36.6%
US: 80.3%
If they're used to 6% annual growth or thereabouts in the US, then 3-4% might well feel not so great. In the period from 1950-2012, these are the top years for year on year GDP growth:
UK:
/proxy.php?image=https://www.dropbox.com/s/3jr23a5b5cz81kh/ukbest.png?dl=1&hash=53e6f2cef6a749b65b08effa33f39e61
US:
/proxy.php?image=https://www.dropbox.com/s/1kl1ugfwe7cyzi9/usbest.png?dl=1&hash=00701862837c0353575bd2b431cc323c
Note: I'm using a slightly different GDP dataset for this post and the one above. Considering differences of population and land sizes between the UK and US, I think we're holding our own - assuming of course the stats are correct. data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7 Yes. I have to say that Ireland's GDP figures for last year have made me question these stats. I don't think anyone believes they increased their output by a quarter in one year. That's a nonsense. But it is an obvious nonsense. There might be a smaller level of nonsense hidden in some other GDP figures, but such that it's not inflating them enough to make them look strange. But still, dubious data or not, it's fun to play with these numbers.
On the population thing, there's also GDP per capita to consider. In some ways that might be a better measure. I might have a look at GDP per capita next, but I'll have to get the population stats first. Yes that will be interesting.
I doubt it will paint as rosy a picture.
Without our rampant population growth, I doubt there would have been any real increase in GDP.
I would not be surprised to see GPD per capita down.
Good luck getting a decent "official" population figure though.
Even then you might want to add 10%
I have a very hard time believing that the population has only increased by 9 million * since I was a wee lad (30years ago).
* source - wiki When I was young the population was kept in check by pterodactyls data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7
I agree with your post. So this is today's chart and I hope this is a new one. These are the best decades for GDP growth in the period 1950-2012:
/proxy.php?image=https://www.dropbox.com/s/8r6dvdxphqbhw9u/bestdecades.png?dl=1&hash=b7e488182e7a1e6943cd1bd622458fb6
When I was comparing US/UK performance previously, I sort of chose a decade at random, subject to some conditions. I wanted one in the recent era, away from the troubles of the 1970s, and one that was perhaps representative of what has been typical since. I was also hoping to choose one with reasonable growth for the comparison with the US - I didn't want to unfairly disadvantage our side by choosing a very bad set of years. Other than that, though, it wasn't a carefully made choice.
Since yesterday I started to wonder which decades exactly have been best for growth in this country, and you can see the result of that wondering exercise above. Have you ever used the IMF data, I find the nominal GDP taken in US dollars quite interesting being the dominant international currency:
https://www.avforums.com/data/attachments/678/678928-583018ce11ab6b94ebea005aac0e2870.jpg RBS Economics (@RBS_Economics) on Twitter
Some interesting numbers on GDP per head there.
GDP per head barely moved since 2008.
Those are based (i would imagine) on official population numbers so GDP per head is probably negative if youbelieve that the population change is higher than the official stats...
Pages:
[1]
2