Euro/US GDP Charts

fluxo

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:

                                                                                                                                               

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":

                                                                                                                                               

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:

                                                                                                                                               

Eeks!

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:

                                                                                                                                               

Now on to sunnier times. Average growth from 2010 onward:

                                                                                                                                               

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:

                                                                                                                                               

And finally, the year 2015:

                                                                                                                                               

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).

fluxo

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.

fluxo

In the period from 1950-2012, these are the top years for year on year GDP growth:

UK:

                                                                                                                                               

US:

                                                                                                                                               

Note: I'm using a slightly different GDP dataset for this post and the one above.

EarthRod

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.

fluxo

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.

domtheone

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 (30  years ago).

* source - wiki

fluxo

When I was young the population was kept in check by pterodactyls

I agree with your post.

fluxo

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:

                                                                                                                                               

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.

pandemic

Have you ever used the IMF data, I find the nominal GDP taken in US dollars quite interesting being the dominant international currency:

domtheone

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 you  believe that the population change is higher than the official stats...