GDP per capita disparities in regions of Europe 1900-1950

In 1900, GDP per capita in Southern Europe was just over half of the rate in Western Europe, while it was just 39 percent across Central and Eastern Europe. By 1950, Central and Eastern Europe's GDP per capita had risen to 51 percent of Western Europe's, while Southern Europe's GDP per capita had fallen to 44 percent. Post-war recovery across the south was comparatively slower than the West due to the lack of American investment in the fascist states of Spain and Portugal, the civil war in Greece, and the lack of industrialization in Italy. As these factors reversed or concluded in the 1950s, Southern Europe's economic development fell more in line with that of the rest of Western Europe in this decade, with Italy, in particular, emerging as one of the world's leading economies.