Global Growth Tracker
World Economics
3 June 2020
Speed Read
- The World Economy has grown for 59 out of the last 60 years for which annual data is available.
- Only the Great Recession of 2008/2009 and the current Coronavirus episode have interrupted over half a century of growth.
- Over the whole of the last 6 decades, annual real GDP growth has averaged 3.2%, and 1.6% in per capita terms.
- Global Real GDP split by continent illustrates that the share of the world’s GDP in the Asian region grew considerably faster than all other continents, from 16.8% in 1960 to 48.3% in 2019.
- The wealth of Europe and the Americas remains considerably higher compared with Asia and African continents.
The World Economy – Over Half a Century of Near Continuous Growth
The World Economy has grown for 59 out of the past 60 years, as shown by the year-on-year chart below. Only the Great Recession saw a slight dip in real global GDP, measured in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) terms.
The chart and table 1 below illustrates world economic growth decade by decade over the past 58 years, in terms of real GDP and real GDP per capita. Over the whole of the last 5 decades, annual real GDP growth has averaged 3.2%, and 1.6% in per capita terms.
Table 1: Global Real GDP growth by decade
The chart below shows the percentage share of world’s real