ABSTRACT
The two decades after 1950 were truly a golden age. Per capita income growth rates were substantial and sweeping. A wide range of countries came to enjoy historically unprecedented levels of prosperity by 1970: the United States and Canada in North America; most of Western European excluding the Iberian region, and Japan in East Asia. Moreover, while the Soviet Union and the eastern European communist regions positioned between Russia and Western Europe did not reach Western European levels of wellbeing per person by the early 1970s, they did achieve rapid per capita income growth averaged over the two decades between 1950 and 1970.
