Regional Changes in World GDP

Mark Perry has an interesting post, with a super-interesting graph, at his blog Carpe Diem, of long-run changes in regional share of global GDP, using historical data sets from Economic Research Service of the US Department of Agriculture.

As Perry explains:

What might be surprising is that the U.S. share of world GDP has been relatively constant for the last 40 years, and is actually slightly higher in 2009 (26.7%) that it was in 1975 (26.3%). It’s also interesting that the EU15’s share of world GDP has declined from about 36% of world output in 1969 to only 27% in 2009.

He notes that this historical data set captures only about 91% of world GDP, particularly leaving out Canada.  And he adds:

World GDP (real) doubled between 1969 and 1990, and has increased by another 60% since then, so that world output in 2009 is more than three times greater than in 1969. We might mistakenly assume that the significant economic growth over the last 40 years in China, India and Brazil has somehow come “at the expense of economic growth in the U.S.” (based on the “fixed pie fallacy”) but the data suggest otherwise. Because of advances in technology, innovation, and significant improvements in U.S. productivity, America’s share of total world output has remained remarkably constant at a little more than 25%, despite the significant increases in output around the world, especially in Asia.