Narayana Kocherlakota, Columnist

Why Americans Feel Poor, in One Chart

Output per person has been growing at the slowest rate on record.

October 4, 2016 at 11:30 AM UTC

Narayana Kocherlakota is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is a professor of economics at the University of Rochester and was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis from 2009 to 2015.

Where's the prosperity?
Photographer: David McNew/Getty Images

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Why do so many Americans feel dissatisfied about the economic state of their nation? One simple chart offers a lot of insight.

Economists measure standards of living in many ways. Among the most common is to look at the change in the value of goods and services produced by a country, adjusted for inflation and for population growth. This measure, known as per capita real gross domestic product, essentially shows how much income the average person is generating.