An Economic History of New Zealand in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

John Singleton

Economic History
Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth

Article

Living standards in New Zealand were among the highest in the world between the late nineteenth century and the 1960's. But New Zealand's economic growth was very sluggish between 1950 and the early 1990s, and most Western European countries, as well as several in East Asia, overtook New Zealand in terms of real per capita income. By the early 2000s, New Zealand's GDP per capita was in the bottom half of the developed world.