posts: 11701

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    "id": "wp-11701",
    "slug": "structural-transformation-and-deindustrialization-evidence-from-todays-rich-countries",
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                        "text": "Most of the advanced economies of the world have been deindustrializing for decades and have moved into a new \u2018post-industrial\u2019 phase of development. This post asks how they got there.",
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                        "text": "Although there are many idiosyncrasies in trends, the evidence shows that as rich countries developed, the relative contribution of agriculture to both total employment and GDP declined, while the contribution of services rose in both respects. In the middle, the relative importance of the manufacturing sector first expanded and then contracted. In other words, the data shows there was first a period of industrialization as production shifted from agriculture to manufacturing, followed by a period of deindustrialization as production shifted from manufacturing to services.",
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                        "text": "In this blog post we discuss this transition and the drivers of this process of \u2018structural transformation\u2019.",
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                        "text": "The analysis in what follows is based mainly on a considerable update of the data provided by Herrendorf, Rogerson and Valentinyi (2014).{ref}Berthold Herrendorf, Richard Rogerson and Akos Valentinyi (2014) \u2013 \u201cGrowth and Structural Transformation\u201d Handbook of Economic Growth Vol. 2B{/ref} You can read more about how we updated the data by consulting the 'Sources' tabs in the charts below.",
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                        "text": "Changes in employment ",
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                        "text": "One way to study the process of \u2018structural transformation\u2019 across countries is to track how employment changed among sectors in the economy. The following chart shows this for ten of today\u2019s rich countries. You can change the displayed country and see that the overall picture is very consistent.",
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                        "text": "In all these countries the share of workers employed in agriculture has been going down, while the share of those employed in services has been going up; and the manufacturing sector first increases and then decreases in relative importance.",
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                        "text": "By clicking on the option labeled \u2018Absolute\u2019, you can plot the total number of workers by sector. This shows a different picture, since we can see that the labor force in these countries has been growing substantially. As we can see, despite the fact that the share of employment in agriculture tends to go down constantly in all countries, in many cases, the total number of workers in agriculture first increases\u00a0and then decreases. The US is a clear example of this pattern: the total number of people employed in agriculture peaked more than a century ago around 1911, before beginning to decline.",
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                        "text": " Changes in economic output",
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                        "text": "A second\u00a0way to study the structural transformation is to track how output changes across sectors in the economy. The following visualization shows this by plotting the evolution of the sectoral composition of GDP between 1800 and 2010 for the same rich countries included in the previous chart.",
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                        "text": "We can notice here the broad pattern outlined before: as rich countries developed, the share of GDP in agriculture declined, while the share of GDP in services went up; and in the middle, the relative importance of the manufacturing sector first expanded and then contracted. Indeed, this broad pattern is followed by all countries in the sample. (An\u00a0exception\u00a0is South Korea, where manufacturing has stabilized at around 40% of GDP since the early 1990s.)",
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                        "text": "This chart also shows us that in early industrializers such as the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands and France, the manufacturing sector already constituted over 30% of GDP in the first half of the nineteenth century. The USA exceeded that threshold only by the end of the century, while the other \u2018latecomer\u2019 economies reached it at the beginning of the twentieth century. The only exception is again South Korea, which was a largely agrarian country only 50 years ago,\u00a0before\u00a0it began an extremely rapid industrialization process\u2014a process that has come together with a ",
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                        "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/real-gdp-per-capita-pennwt?tab=chart&country=~KOR",
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                                "text": "30-fold increase",
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                        "text": " in average incomes.",
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                        "text": "When comparing the sectoral composition among countries, one must keep in mind that the way we measure these shares is important. The chart below\u00a0shows value added in ",
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                                "text": "current prices,",
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                        "text": "\u00a0which means that the figures correspond to estimates of output value at the prevailing prices when output took place. The picture would however look different if we had chosen to show value added figures in ",
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                                "text": "constant prices",
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                        "text": " (i.e. estimating the value of output at the prevailing prices of a fixed point in time). In the technical note at the end of this post we explain in more detail why this is. The key point to note is that in constant prices, the pattern of \u2018deindustrialization\u2019 is less marked.",
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                        "text": "The forces at play",
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                        "text": "The charts above show that there is an unambiguous trend of the agricultural share of GDP and employment to fall over the course of economic development. However, this does not necessarily mean that agricultural output falls in absolute terms.",
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                        "text": "When we look at data on agricultural production in Sweden, for example, we find that agricultural output did not fall as the country industrialized. Despite the process of industrialization, agricultural output increased up to 1931, after which it fell slightly but then stabilized for many decades.{ref}Sch\u00f6n, L. & Krantz, O. (2015), \"New Swedish Historical National Accounts since the 16th Century in Constant and Current Prices.\" Lund Papers in Economic History 140, Lund University.",
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                        "text": "Sch\u00f6n, L. & Krantz, O. (2012), \u201cSwedish Historical National Accounts 1560\u20132010.\u201d Lund Papers in Economic History 123, Lund University.",
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                        "text": "Krantz, O. & Sch\u00f6n, L. (2007), Swedish Historical National Accounts 1800\u20132000, Lund Studies in Economic History 41, Lund.{/ref}",
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                        "text": "Given that the share of agriculture in total employment is decreasing throughout this period, labor productivity in agriculture was actually growing. In fact, in absolute terms it continues to grow even after agricultural output reaches its peak. This is shown in the chart, which plots the ratio between output and employment in agriculture.",
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                        "text": "A point that we need to keep in mind here is that this is an absolute increase in productivity. In relative terms the picture differs, since other sectors also increase productivity, and in fact tend to do so at a faster pace. Indeed, if we look at the charts of employment and output shares, we can see that throughout the whole period for which we have data, the share of workers in agriculture exceeds the share of agriculture in GDP. This attests to the well-documented fact that in comparison to the other sectors (i.e. in relative terms), agriculture tends to be the least productive sector in most economies.{ref}See for example Caselli, F. (2005). \u201cAccounting for Cross-Country Income Differences\u201d. Handbook of Economic Growth Vol I. pp. 679-741 ; Restuccia, D.; Yang, D.T.; Zhu, X. \u201cAgriculture and aggregate productivity: A quantitative cross-country analysis\u201d. Journal of Monetary Economics, 55(2) ; Gollin, D.; Lagakos, D.; Waugh, M. (2014). \u201cThe Agricultural Productivity Gap\u201d. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 129(2){/ref}",
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                        "text": "When taken together, the evidence tells us that the story of structural transformation is not one of a stagnant agricultural sector overtaken by dynamic manufacturing and service sectors; instead, what matters are the ",
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                                "text": "differences",
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                        "text": " in productivity growth between sectors.",
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                        "text": "It is then important to keep in mind that 'deindustrialization' means that there is a loss in the relative importance of this sector. In absolute terms the industrial output might well go up as a country 'deindustrializes'; just as agricultural output might go up in absolute terms during periods of 'industrialization'.",
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                        "text": "Alvarez-Cuadrado and Poschke (2011) show that at early stages of development, technological improvements in manufacturing are the greatest contributors to \u2018pulling\u2019 workers out of agriculture.{ref}Alvarez-Cuadrado, F. ; Poschke, M. (2011). \u201cStructural Change Out of Agriculture: Labor Push versus Labor Pull\u201d. American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 3(3){/ref} At later stages, the decline in the share of consumption devoted to agricultural goods, combined with continued improvements in agricultural technology, become the predominant force in releasing workers from agriculture, further contributing to the pattern of \u2018structural transformation\u2019.",
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                                "text": "Additional information",
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                                        "text": "The chart showing changes in the composition of GDP by sector uses current prices (i.e. figures correspond to estimates of value added at the prevailing prices when output took place). Measured this way, the changes in production values between any two years will consist of a combination of movements in prices and movements in volumes. Thus, we cannot know if the change in sectoral composition between any two years is a consequence of price changes or of more \u2018fundamental\u2019 structural changes.",
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                                        "text": "An alternative way of measuring sectoral value added is by \u2018chaining\u2019 prices to those observed in a particular year, which allows us to control for changes in prices. Dividing sectoral value added by the ratio of current prices to prices in the chained year, it is possible to work out the volume of production.",
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                                        "text": "Although this is a more reliable measure of the growth in productive capacity, it is difficult to use in cross-country comparisons of sectoral composition, due to the tendency of a sector to experience a decline in the price of its output as its productivity rises. Given the tendency for manufacturing to experience higher productivity growth than other sectors of the economy, and consequently for its relative price to fall over time, the implication is that the earlier the year to which we chain prices, the larger the manufacturing sector will appear to be.{ref}Dani Rodrik finds that in recent decades, the relative price of deflator of manufacturing has fallen in developed economies, in line with improvements in technology. (Rodrik, D. (2016). \u201cPremature Deindustrialization\u201d. Journal of Economic Growth, 21(1), 1-33.) This trend is not universal, however, as the same phenomenon cannot be observed in Latin America. Nevertheless, other work by Rodrik finds that manufacturing is the only sector which experiences unconditional convergence in productivity levels, implying it indeed is the fastest-growing sector. (Rodrik, D. (2013). \u201cUnconditional Convergence in Manufacturing\u201d. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 128(1), 165-204){/ref}",
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                                        "text": "In fact, Rodrik (2016){ref}Rodrik, D. (2016). \u201cPremature Deindustrialization\u201d. Journal of Economic Growth, 21(1), 1-33.{/ref}\u00a0finds that in large part, the continued reduction in the current price share of manufacturing in rich countries\u2019 GDP masks the fact that when measured in real terms (ie. keeping prices constant), this share has remained fairly stable.",
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        "type": "article",
        "title": "Structural transformation: how did today\u2019s rich countries become \u2018deindustrialized\u2019?",
        "authors": [
            "Esteban Ortiz-Ospina",
            "Nicolas Lippolis"
        ],
        "dateline": "May 26, 2017",
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        "featured-image": "employment-by-economic-sector-1.png"
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    "createdAt": "2017-05-17T17:48:13.000Z",
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    "updatedAt": "2022-07-14T12:05:15.000Z",
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    "publishedAt": "2017-05-26T11:21:30.000Z",
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