South Korea has doubled its productivity since 2000, overtaking Japan

The economist Paul Krugman once said, “Productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run, it’s almost everything”. When workers can produce more value in the same amount of time, economies can grow faster, and living standards can rise.

The chart shows the productivity metric published by the Penn World Table for South Korea and Japan. It measures gross domestic product (GDP) per hour of work.

Since 2000, South Korea’s productivity has more than doubled, narrowing what was once a vast gap with Japan. It has now even surpassed its neighbor.

Many forces affect productivity, but one stands out in Korea’s case: its commitment to innovation. The country spends nearly 5% of GDP on research and development, among the highest shares in the world, and it files far more patents per million people than any other nation.

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This page was imported from Our World in Data. “South Korea has doubled its productivity since 2000, overtaking Japan” by Simon van Teutem, published by Our World in Data under CC BY 4.0. Changed here: set as a page, its interactive charts shown as pictures. Data from third parties keeps its own licence.

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