Demographic Cycles and Economic Growth: The Long Swing Reconsidered

Abstract

For many Western countries the history of the last two centuries reveals both a sustained rise in per capita output and a tendency toward a more equal distribution of the economic product. The experience has been characterized, however, by repetitive fluctua- tions in the levels and growth rates of aggregate production and its components. The length of the shorter of these fluctuations, the business cycle, ranges from the 40- to 45-month inventory cycle to the so-called Juglar of seven to ten years.1 Two other classes of interruptions in the secular trend have also been singled out for study by economic historians. The first is the Kondratieff cycle, a movement of roughly fifty years which has been primarily identified in price series.2 The second is the Kuznets cycle, or "long swing," which in length is between the Juglar and the Kondratieff.8 The long swing constitutes the primary theme of this study.4