Concept
Economic growth
Overview
In economics, economic growth is an increase in the quantity and quality of the economic goods and services that a society produces. It can be measured as the increase in the inflation-adjusted output of an economy in a given year or over a period of time.
The rate of growth is typically calculated as real gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate, real GDP per capita growth rate, GNI per capita growth or median income growth. The "rate" of economic growth refers to the geometric annual rate of growth in GDP or GDP per capita between the first and the last year over a period of time. This growth rate represents the trend in the average level of GDP over the period, and ignores any fluctuations in the GDP around this trend. Growth is usually calculated in "real" value, which is inflation-adjusted, to eliminate the distorting effect of inflation on the prices of goods produced. GDP per capita is the GDP of the entire country divided by the number of people in the country. Measurement of economic growth uses national income accounting.
Economists refer to economic growth caused by more efficient use of inputs (increased productivity of labor, of physical capital, of energy or of materials) as intensive growth. In contrast, economic growth caused only by increases in the amount of inputs available for use (increased population, for example, or new territory) counts as extensive growth. Innovation also generates economic growth. In the U.S. about 60% of consumer spending in 2013 went on goods and services that did not exist in 1869.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
Unproductive expenditure of what was destined to be expended productively, they always characterise as a squandering of resources, and call it profusion and prodigality. The productive expenditure of that which might, without encroaching upon capital, be expended unproductively, is called saving, economy, frugality. Want, misery, and starvation, are described as the lot of a nation which annually employs less and…
John Stuart Mill, Essays on some unsettled Questions of Political Economy
States what Economic growth is; the author is tied to Economic growth in the knowledge graph.
In one way or the other, the increased population is provided for, and all are as well off as before. But if the growth of human power over nature is suspended or slackened, and population does not slacken its increase; if, with only the existing command over natural agencies, those agencies are called upon for an increased produce; this greater produce will not be afforded to the increased population, without…
John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy
States what Economic growth is; the author is tied to Economic growth in the knowledge graph.
This is the balance of the annual produce and consumption. If the exchangeable value of the annual produce, it has already been observed, exceeds that of the annual consumption, the capital of the society must annually increase in proportion to this excess. The society in this case lives within its revenue; and what is annually saved out of its revenue, is naturally added to its capital, and employed so as to…
Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
States what Economic growth is.
Philosophers who discussed Economic growth
Related ideas
- Glorious Revolution
- Gross domestic product
- Private property
- Industrial Revolution
- Japan
- Joseph Schumpeter
- Exponential growth
- Great Depression
- Middle East
- The Guardian
- Indian subcontinent
- UNESCO
- South Korea
- Southeast Asia
- Scientific American
- Thomas Robert Malthus
- United Kingdom
- United Nations
- Public sector
- Martha Nussbaum
- United States
- Economic inequality
- Commerce
- Nature (journal)
Place in the tradition
Part of Liberalism.