New Zealand's rankings according to the OECD 2005
So much for Labour's goal of getting NZ back into the top half of the OECD.
We were fifth in 1960, down to nineteenth by 1980 and 23rd in 2004. Look. We have moved up one place in 2005.
The economic survey of New Zealand, released yesterday, says, There has been little progress towards the goal of lifting living standards to the OECD median
Despite strong growth performance since the early 1990s and the adoption over the past 20 years of structural policies that are, for the most part, consistent with OECD best practices, living standards have remained some 16% below the OECD median for some years. Labour utilisation has increased substantially, but total economy hourly productivity growth has been lacklustre. Several reasons can be offered that might explain this outcome. First, common to many countries, productivity measurement issues are important. Productivity growth has been stronger in the “measured” sector (where independent measures of both inputs and outputs exist) than in the total economy and has been comparable to that of Australia. Second, the large increase in labour absorption that New Zealand has achieved over the past decade partly in response to relative prices of labour and capital – may have come at the cost of a temporary decline in productivity growth as less productive workers were absorbed into the labour force.
3 comments:
If we had averaged an extra 1% growth over the last 40 years we would now be fourth behind Luxembourg, Norway and the US. And more than 1% an be achieved with very little downside.
On the other hand, I think immigration has caused our GDP per capita to exceed the 'natural' level. We have gained people of above average productivity who brought below average numbers of children with them. That is going to slow down at some point.
Nigel, A Treasury report showed that 1% extra growth could be added by increasing the participation of young women 25-34 to the average of the top 5 OECD countries.
WFF is doing the opposite. Another reason to expect a slowing of growth.
Roll on the 2008 election.
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