A Comparison Of Regional Development In 5 European Countries And 8 Large Regions Of The United States, 1960-2021

We analyze the evolution of Employment, Population, real Production per capita and real Wages in 8 BEA regions of the United States, in comparison with 5 major European countries: France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom, for the period 1960-2021. We estimate some equations that relate Employment by sector and Population in BEA regions in years 2000 and 2021. We find that for 1960-2000 both the group of European countries and the United States experienced a similar average increase of real Production per capita and real Wage, although the U.S. experienced a higher growth of Employment and Population. For the period 2000-2021 the United States and the group of 5 European countries experienced a similar trend of Employment increase but with very low increase of average real Wage in Europe and a higher increase in the United States. The article also analyses 6 indicators of Development and Quality of Life in 51 regions of the United States and in 78 European regions in year 2016: Life Satisfaction, Income per capita at Purchasing Power Parities, Life Expectancy, Unemployment rate, Homicides rate, and Pollution (PM2.5). The values of the two first indicators are usually higher in the US regions and have more equal distribution across regions, while in the European regions the values are usually lower and the coefficient of variation is higher across regions. The main conclusion is that for the period 2000-2021 the European policies failed to get a sufficient level of industrial production per capita in order to get a desired increase of real Production per capita and average real Wage in many of their regions.