GDP growth by political party
Martin Manley posted a fascinating post a few weeks back that looked at a number of economic measures by presidential party. They tell a fascinating story that runs counter to the (old?) conventional wisdom that republicans are better for the economy than democrats. Democratic presidents since the 1930s have out-performed republican presidents on measures such as GDP growth, stock performance, overall employment and on Gini index changes.
The graphs are built in a few ways that I consider unusual: they are bucketed by president, and so appear to treat 8 year terms the same as 4 year terms, and they include data from ww2 and a few years prior which brings the outstanding relative performance of Roosevelt into the analysis (most macro econ studies look at data from 1947 or 48 onwards).
So, naturally I was naturally curious to understand the data in a bit more detail. Manley cites Brad DeLong, who in turn cites Doug Henwood, Liscio Report. I know very little about DeLong, but a bit of quick browsing on his blog showed that he is, um, heavily partisan. So, I’m naturally wary. To make matters worse, the Liscio report appears to be a subscription service and I couldn’t find the data used on his site either. Given the partisan source, and the partisan biasing, I presumed the data in general was probably rigged and stopped thinking about it.
This evening curiosity got the better of me so I decided to try and redo the analysis using stats and date ranges that are a bit more logical/traditional. I used the BEA’s GDP stats (in chained 2000 dollars), and BLS data for unemployment & productivity (only available from 1948 onwards). The quick takeaway is that the graphs are definitely directionally correct: over the last 60 years, democratic presidents (and Congresses) have done a better job with the economy.
GDP
On a macro level, democratic presidents definitely trounced republicans.
The numbers are even more pronounced when you compare what happened when democrats and republicans each controlled both branches:
Employment and Productivity
Generally speaking, GDP growth is largely driven by both growth in employment and growth in productivity. In both cases, democratic presidents performed better than their republican counterparts:
I wonder why graphs don’t feature more prominently in campaigns?
Update
I added this graph based on a comment by B Raymond wondering how long a president’s economic policies take to have an impact. Frankly, it isn’t clear that their policies are having any increased or decreased impact over time at all:
Rahul pointed me towards this really interesting analysis that shows income growth by party and income class.
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GDP = C + I + G + (X-I)
Remember that government spending is included. Dems spend more.
you are the man, if gov't spending is taken out i wonder what the results would show. on top of that, i'd like to see a graph of what party controlled congress vs economic growth. congress controls tax dollars, not the president
Then what’s wrong with governmrnt spending?
There is a graph showing all the combinations of president and congress. Go ahead and look at it.
What eveidence do you have for the statement that democrats spend more?
You can find similar, but up to date, information here- http://politicsthatwork.com