Britain had the highest per-capita rise in GDP in the G7 since Labour came to power. But critics are calling for an end to "unsustainable" growth.
As the economy emerged from recession, figures from the IMF – including data for 2009 – show that since 1997, Britain has had the highest per-capita rise in GDP in the G7. But critics are calling for an end to “unsustainable” growth.
As the chart below shows, Britain’s GDP per per capita rose 21 per cent since 1997, with GDP overall rising 28 per cent, behind only Canada (35 per cent) and the US (31 per cent).
The growth in GDP was responsible for creating millions of jobs, providing a better standard of living for a decade, and mending the broken public services infrastructure. Although some, including James Purnell, have pointed out that, “GDP had been artificially inflated by the housing and financial bubble.”
A new campaign by the New Economic Foundation is arguing that “indefinite global economic growth is unsustainable” while campaign group 38 degrees are calling for an end to the “fixation” with economic growth.
A new website and YouTube video, The Impossible Hamster, has been set up to promote the campaign.
Watch it:
Left Foot Forward doesn't have the backing of big business or billionaires. We rely on the kind and generous support of ordinary people like you.
You can support hard-hitting journalism that holds the right to account, provides a forum for debate among progressives, and covers the stories the rest of the media ignore. Donate today.
23 Responses to “UK has highest GDP per capita rise in G7 since 1997”
Fab 5: Tuesday 26 January 2010 | The Young Fabians Blog
[…] GDP figures released today show the UK is technically out of recession. The BBC’s Economics Editor, Stephanie Flanders, provides the IMF’s take on UK growth prospects. Will Straw of Left Foot Forward highlights rising GDP per capita since 1997, and a new campaign to end the “fixation” wi… […]
Roger
In defence of Will you have to put your goalposts somewhere – 1991 would actually distort the figures even more as you are then starting off from a recession – ditto for 1979.
When Jim Manzi did a similar exercise from a right-wing perspective he actually started in 1973 and made the US look even better by lumping not just the EU but the whole of the former Soviet bloc into one ‘Europe’ figure.
As I said above demographics is probably as or more important than macro-economic policies – Japan is probably a case in point having successively tried pretty every variant of free market and Keynesian solution since 1990 to little avail given that it has an ever more unforgiving demographic profile.
GDP and GDP per capita are just way too crude measures – would anyone who knows Germany and France well really want to exchange their economic systems for ours just because we managed to add an extra half to one point more to GDP per year.
Tom Freeman
Hi Will
Do you have a link to the per capita data? I’ve had a look at the latest WEO but I can’t see it.