Growth sources of national income in Western Europe 1950-1962

Between 1950 and 1962, West Germany's national income grew by over 7.2 percent, in contrast to the United Kingdom's growth of just 2.29 percent. The primary reason for national growth in this period was improvements made to productivity, such as general advances in knowledge, reallocation of labor resources, and economies of scale (i.e. lowering costs by producing in mass). Increases in labor and capital also contributed to economic growth during this period, and in the UK it was responsible for around half of national growth, however the improvements in productivity constituted a much larger share of national growth in other nations. In Germany, France, and Italy, improvements to scale economies alone saw national income grow by more than one percent, although the largest contributor in Italy was the reallocation of labor from agricultural to industrial sectors.