productivity

Historical trends

Early industrialization

For most of humanity’s history, advances in technology, productivity, and real income per capita came very slowly and sporadically. But with the development of modern science in the 17th century and the quickening of technological innovation that it sparked, the stage was set for significant improvements in productivity. The gains remained modest until the latter part of the 19th century. For the first 50 years after the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution in Britain around 1760, labour productivity grew at an average annual rate of around 0.5 percent, but it then accelerated to more than 1 percent in the 19th century. In the United States it increased at an average rate of 0.5 percent until after the Civil War.

By the latter part of the 19th century the countries of western Europe, the United States, and Japan enjoyed a marked and sustained rate of improvement in productivity generally exceeding that of Britain, the earlier leader. Growth of real gross domestic product (GDP) per hour worked in the western European countries and Japan averaged 1.6 percent from 1870 to 1950, while growth in the United States averaged 2 percent from 1870 to 1913 and almost 2.5 percent from 1913 to 1950. (See Table 1.) Data for 10 additional industrialized countries indicated that much the same range of productivity growth rates prevailed for the smaller western European countries and for Canada and Australia. But much of the rest of the world had not yet begun to experience sustained growth of productivity and real per capita income.

Two percent per year may not seem an impressive number, but when compounded over a century it results in more than a sevenfold increase. The sustained and significant increases in productivity of industrialized countries beginning in the latter part of the 19th century were one of the most momentous developments in modern history, and it became much more widely diffused in later decades.

Why did the acceleration begin in the late 19th century? The great improvements in transportation and communications that were made possible by the inventions of the steam and internal-combustion engines and the telephone and wireless communications led to a major expansion of trade, both domestic and international. The British example of free trade led to some liberalization by other countries. By the turn of the century, an increasing number of large companies were beginning to conduct purposeful programs of research and development so that invention and innovation became commonplace and even expected. Educational levels rose, and business schools were founded to teach the new science of management. The growth of per capita income itself tended to raise saving rates, and investment in new plants, equipment, and natural resource development rose substantially. Finally, the growth of productivity in agriculture and increased labour mobility made possible the enormous expansion of manufacturing and, later, the service industries.

Growth of productivity in countries other than the United States accelerated greatly after World War II. The five-country average rate of growth in labour productivity (Table 1) more than tripled in the 1950–73 period compared with the preceding 80 years. After 1973 productivity growth fell by almost half in the five countries, on average, but remained well above the earlier rate. The deceleration was greater in the United States.

Before trying to explain these trends, see Table 2, which summarizes productivity changes from 1950 through a more recent year for a larger number of industrialized countries, and then see Table 4, which shows estimates for groups of countries composing most of the world.

In the 12 countries other than the United States shown in Table 2, real GDP per employed person grew between 1950 and 1973 at an average rate of about 4 percent, about double the rate for the United States. From 1973 to 1979 the average rate decelerated to 2.2 percent a year for the 12 industrialized nations and to virtually zero in the United States. But after 1979 (and especially after 1981) the U.S. rate accelerated significantly, while the 12-nation average rate fell further to 1.8 percent, which was nevertheless still well above the U.S. rate of 0.8 percent a year.

During the entire period after 1950 there was a significant convergence of rates of productivity growth among the industrialized nations, as shown in Table 3. The average real GDP per person for the 11 countries rose from about 44 percent of that in the United States in 1950 to almost 80 percent in 1986. Furthermore, there is a significant negative correlation between the 1950 levels and the 1950–86 rates of productivity growth—those countries that started farthest behind grew most rapidly in productivity. There had already been some tendency toward convergence among the industrialized nations before 1950, but it was much stronger during the golden quarter-century following World War II.

Of even wider importance, most nations outside the original industrialized group also began to record substantial increases in labour productivity beginning around 1950 (see Table 4). What fragmentary information is available indicates that generally low rates of productivity growth were the norm in those countries before 1950. So World War II was a true watershed, in that after the immediate postwar period of reconstruction, most nations were able to accelerate their productivity gains markedly.

The country data underlying Table 4 do not indicate a worldwide convergence of productivity levels, although some tendency toward convergence within the several groups is evident. Note that the group of low-income countries had the lowest rates of productivity advance, while the oil exporters and relatively industrialized middle-income countries had the highest rates. Whereas the centrally planned economies had above-average rates of productivity growth in the period 1950–70, after 1970 they fell below average.