Per Capita GDP Growth Since 1990 is About the Same in Japan As Europe, But Only Hear About Lost Decades in Japan

Mon, 02/28/2011 - 19:17 EDT - Dr. Mark J. Perry

RDF10

Here's an updated chart to follow up on this post about the "Media Myth of Japan's Lost Decades." The chart above starts in 1990, instead of 1980 like in the previous post, and shows real GDP per capita for the U.S., Germany, Japan and Italy, with each country's GDP per capita converted to an index equal to a starting value of 100 in 1990. We can see that Japan's real output per person grew slightly less per year (average of 0.91%) than Germany's (1.12%), and slightly more than Italy's (0.76%), and each of those country's real GDP per capita grew less than the U.S. at 1.41% per year. And yet even with economic growth in Germany and Italy and many other European countries that is comparable to Japan's growth, we never hear about the "lost decades" in Germany or Italy or the U.K.

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Per Capita GDP Growth Since 1990 is About the Same in Japan As Europe, But Only Hear About Lost Decades in Japan

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