When studying the economics of growth and development, you learn that economic growth is the gradual but consistent increase of a country’s national and per capita income over a long period. It helps in evaluating the success when allocating scarce resources. An increase in the national income means an increase in goods and services output, while the per capita income shows the improvement in the standard of living. Countries measure this through statistics, such as national income and productive capacity.
Productivity is important because an increase in income can only be sustainable when there are improvements in infrastructure, such as electricity generation, transport networks and technological innovations that can help in producing more goods and services. You can measure economic growth through income and asset value changes. To accurately measure economic growth, you track the increase in real national and per capita income of a country over a long period.
