Tag Archives: Productivity

Measuring History And Economic Productivity

Over the holiday break, the Economist ran a bunch of really cool little snippets of articles.  One of them caught my eye:

The chart below shows a population-weighted history of the past two millennia. By this reckoning, over 28% of all the history made since the birth of Christ was made in the 20th century. Measured in years lived, the present century, which is only ten years old, is already “longer” than the whole of the 17th century. This century has made an even bigger contribution to economic history. Over 23% of all the goods and services made since 1AD were produced from 2001 to 2010, according to an updated version of Angus Maddison’s figures.

What this is saying is that of all the economic history since the birth of Christ, 23% of it has been made in this decade alone.

And the chart.

Fascinating.  Considering that 55% of all economic history was made in the last full century, we are almost half way there and we’re only 11 years in.