gordon the rise and fall of american growth

Over the coming decades diets became more varied, and food got easier to prepare, thanks to the introduction of home refrigerators, prepared foods, and supermarkets. In the several decades after 1870, every aspect of American life was transformed:įood: In 1870 Americans were well-fed, but with a monotonous diet high in pork and cornmeal, foods that could easily be preserved without refrigerators. The bulk of the book’s 700+ pages are dedicated to the first three points above: a qualitative and quantitative survey of how the American standard of living has changed since 1870.

Therefore, high growth is a thing of the past, and low growth will be the norm for the future.

All of the trends that led to high growth in that period are played out already, and there are none on the horizon to replace them.We can see these differences reflected in economic metrics, which grew significantly faster especially during 1920–70 than before or since.Since 1970, information and communication technology has been similarly transformed, but other areas of life (such as housing, food, and transportation) have not been.Life and work in the US were utterly transformed for the better between 18, across the board, with improvements continuing at a slower pace until 1970.The argument of the book can be summarized as follows: Since then, growth has slowed, and we have no reason to expect it to return anytime soon, if ever. The thesis of Gordon’s book is that high rates of economic growth in America were a one-time event between roughly 1870–1970, which he calls the “special century”. Indeed there is no investigation, and perhaps no detective. Gordon, is like a murder mystery in which the murderer is never caught. The Rise and Fall of American Growth, by Robert J.

The Rise and Fall of American Growth: A summary

Gordon the rise and fall of american growth