Geopolitical Futures
Keeping the future in focus
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GDP Per Capita Change in Europe
July 9, 2016 With worrying signals this week about the German economy and the Italian
banking sector, Europe has been at the forefront of our minds. So we have chosen here to
present a map of the percentage change in GDP per capita in Europe to show how growth has
developed over the past 20 years.
GDP per capita is, like all measurements, an imperfect statistic, but it is a useful way of
comparing the performance of various economies in terms of standard of living and overall
economic productivity.
The first thing that jumps off the map is Italy's weak performance. The world average growth in
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Geopolitical Futures
Keeping the future in focus
https://geopoliticalfutures.com
GDP per capita in this time span is 38.4 percent, and in the eurozone it is 24.6 percent. Italy in
the same period only saw GDP per capita growth of 3 percent, by far the lowest level. Other
notable countries that had below average performances were Greece (14 percent) and the
Czech Republic (15 percent), as well as Denmark (18 percent), France (21 percent) and Portugal
(21 percent).
The second observation to make is the large increases in Eastern Europe, particularly in the
Baltic states and parts of the Balkans. Money from EU countries has poured into Eastern
Europe since the fall of the Soviet Union. This also explains why Germany is close to the average
figure – its reunification in 1990 had the effect of deflating Germany's growth overall. Eastern
European economies are still much smaller than those in Western Europe by and large, but even
so they have been an engine for growth on the Continent for the past 20 years.
Greece and Cyprus have already run afoul of Brussels, but it is Italy that is the center of
attention right now. What this map doesn't communicate is that Italy is the fourth largest
economy in Europe. Its banking problems cannot be fixed overnight and are the heritage of
decades of mismanagement.
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