ABSTRACT

The decade of the 1950s ushered in advances in the diversification of the Cuban economy, the creation of additional institutions to support ongoing economic development, ongoing growth of the country's middle class, and continuous improvement in the island's measures of living standards. After Cuba suffered through a period of depression from 1932 to 1933, its gross national product grew at an average rate of close to 10 percent annually for over twenty years, with the island's national income almost quadrupling on a real basis between the early 1930s and 1958. A study published by the United Nations in 1950, encompassing seventy countries that together accounted for 90 percent of the world population and over 90 percent of the world's total income showed Cuba's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita as of that time to be in the top third of world population in terms of income.