A Comparison of Levels of GDP Per Capita in Developed and Developing Countries, 1700–1980

Abstract

This paper examines the evolution of the per capita income gap between developed and developing countries. Landes and Kuznets suggest that Western countries already had a big lead before their economic growth accelerated, but Bairoch has recently claimed that European living standards in the mid-eighteenth century were lower than in the rest of the world. I think the existing evidence supports the Landes-Kuznets position, and that Bairoch probably overstates the contemporary income gap and understates per capita income growth in the developing world. But there are contradictory elements in the evidence, on which further research is needed.