Real GDP Per Capita In Developed Countries

Growth rate of real GDP per capita is represented as a sum of two components - a monotonically decreasing economic trend and fluctuations related to a specific age population change. The economic trend is modeled by an inverse function of real GDP per capita with a numerator potentially constant for the largest developed economies. Statistical analysis of 19 selected OECD countries for the period between 1950 and 2004 shows a very weak linear trend in the annual GDP per capita increment for the largest economies: the USA, Japan, France, Italy, and Spain. The UK, Australia, and Canada show a larger positive linear trend. The fluctuations around the trend values are characterized by a quasi-normal distribution with potentially Levy distribution for far tails.