The rise and fall of American growth : the U.S. standard of living since the Civil War /

Examines the economic growth of the United States since the Civil War, arguing that the rate of growth between 1870 and 1970 cannot be repeated and that a number of issues are further stagnating the already slow rate of productivity growth.

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Gordon, Robert J. (Author)
Format: Book
Language:English
Published: Princeton : Princeton University Press, [2016]
Series:Princeton economic history of the Western world.
Subjects:
Table of Contents:
  • Introduction: the ascent and descent of growth
  • Part I. 1870-1940--The great inventions create a revolution inside and outside the home. The starting point: life and work in 1870
  • What they ate and wore and where they bought it
  • The American home: from dark and isolated to bright and networked
  • Motors overtake horses and rail: inventions and incremental improvements
  • From telegraph to talkies: information, communication, and entertainment
  • Nasty, brutish, and short: illness and early death
  • Working conditions on the job and at home
  • Taking and mitigating risks: consumer credit, insurance, and the government
  • Entr'acte. The midcentury shift from revolution to evolution
  • Part II. 1940-2015--The Golden Age and the early warnings of slower growth. Fast food, synthetic fibers, and split-level subdivisions: the slowing transformation of food, clothing, and housing
  • See the USA in your Chevrolet or from a plane flying high above
  • Entertainment and communications from Milton Berle to the iPhone
  • Computers and the internet from the mainframe to Facebook
  • Antibiotics, CT scans, and the evolution of health and medicine
  • Work, youth, and retirement at home and on the job
  • Entr'acte. Toward an understanding of slower growth
  • Part III. The sources of faster and slower growth. The great leap forward from the 1920s to the 1950s: what set of miracles created it?
  • Innovation: can the future match the great inventions of the past?
  • Inequality and the other headwinds: long-run American economic growth slows to a crawl
  • Postscript: America's growth achievement and the path ahead.