Productivity and Long-Term Growth: A Compendium

The pace of economic growth is likely to be a matter of particular importance in the decades just ahead as the economy confronts the need to effect unprecedented generational transfers of income to pay for the retirement of the baby boom generation. A larger economic pie makes such transfers easier for the economy to bear. The burden of these transfers on future workers will be less if long-term growth is faster. For Congress, a potential economic policy question is “Can and should the economy’s long-term growth rate be accelerated by economic policy?” Other questions facing Congress include:

• What factors have historically been important sources of long-term economic growth for the United States?
• In a period of fiscal consolidation, can economic policy accelerate the economy’s long-term growth rate?
• How would faster economic growth help solve the long-term debt problem?
• What steps can Congress take to raise national rates of saving and investment?
• What steps can Congress take to raise the rate of technological advance?
• What policies are most likely to promote education and training of the labor force?
• Should concerns about productivity growth influence immigration policy?
• What is the role of the financial infrastructure in generating long-term growth?

This collection of seven in-depth Congressional Research Service studies are especially significant as Congress and the Administration face the current economic and budget and national debt issues.

Date of Compendium: October 11, 2011
Number of Pages: 235
Order Number: IS30369
Price: $39.95. Subscribers to Congressional Research Report pay $19.97

Compendium available via e-mail as a pdf file.
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