Average annual real GDP per capita growth in Europe by region and period 1950-1998

The period between 1950 and 1973, known as the "Golden Age of capitalism" in the west, was the most prosperous period in Europe's modern history. The economic boom in the post-war period saw GDP grow by an average of almost four percent in Western and Eastern Europe, and almost five percent in the south. Although the west was the most technologically advanced of the three, this period did see a significant amount of catching up in the other two regions, whose rapid industrialization and urbanization changed the lives of its citizens forever.

Recession hits the west

The recession of 1973-1975 brought this economic and industrial growth to an end, however, as conflict in the Middle East saw oil prices skyrocket. Virtually all of Western Europe's industrial powers went into recession, and this had a detrimental knock-on effect in Poland and Romania due to their indebtedness to the west. While the recession ended in most countries by 1976, factors such as unemployment, inflation, and industrial output often remained high until the 1980s. The 1980s and 1990s also saw the rapid economic growth of countries such as Ireland and Finland. However, growth was much slower in these decades for most western economies than it had been in the 1950s and1960s.

Collapse of communism

The 1970s marked the beginning of the economic decline in Eastern Europe, as the command economies of the East Bloc could not maintain pace with the capitalist west and failed to adapt to the challenges that emerged in this period. Communism in Eastern Europe eventually ended around the early 1990s, and the largest power, the Soviet Union, was dissolved. This resulted in severe economic hardships in the former communist states, and recovery in the former-Soviet states did not begin until the late 1990s. The effects of communism's collapse in Europe was so severe that GDP in the east actually fell by an average of 0.9 percent per year between 1973 and 1998