There's One Thing We Can Always Count On in the Long-Run: 2% Growth in Per-Captia Real GDP

Over the last 200 years going back to 1809, the chart above shows that the growth in real GDP per capita in the U.S. has been amazingly constant at an average of 2% year, with fluctuations around that long-term secular trend. The National Bureau of Economic Research has documented 33 recessions since 1857, including a few major ones that are easily identifiable in the chart above: a) three severe contractions in the 1865-1880 period following the Civil War, with the last one lasting more than five years, and accompanied by a 20-year period of below-average growth, and b) the Great Depression with two official recessions (August 1929 to August 1933; and May 1937 to June 1938) and a ten-year period of below trend growth.

Despite the vagaries of the business cycle and unexpected periods of recessions in the U.S. economy, there's one thing we can always count on in the long-run: 2% real growth in per-capita GDP, meaning that that output per person in the U.S. doubles every 35 years, or almost twice during the average person's lifetime. And for that, we can be thankful.

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There's One Thing We Can Always Count On in the Long-Run: 2% Growth in Per-Captia Real GDP

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