US growth by president came up the other day on Twitter.
One problem is obvious. Reagan, Clinton. G.W. Bush, and Obama all had eight years. Trump and G.H.W. Bush had four. The chart measures total growth from the beginning to the end of each president’s time in office. Eight years gives the economy twice as much time to grow compared to four years.
A second, more subtle, issue is population growth. Technically, we should measure the compound annual growth rates of real per-capita GDP.
Just for fun, I started out with annual growth rates:
Next, let’s do it right:
I’m not going to bother with fancy analytics. Simple inspection reveals that it’s difficult to see any difference in growth rates between Republicans and Democrats. I will, however, note that President Clinton benefited immensely from the dot-com boom 1995-2000. And President Trump was hurt by the COVID epidemic late in his term, reducing the growth rate. As always, click here to download my Excel workbook.
