US
	Consumer Price Index*	(1774 to 2007)	GROWTH RATES: Select years to Add another period PLOT SERIES: Select years to
	Unskilled Wage	(1790 to 2006)
	Nominal GDP	(1790 to 2007)
	Real GDP	(1790 to 2007)
	GDP Deflator*	(1790 to 2007)
	Nominal GDP per capita	(1790 to 2007)
	Real GDP per capita	(1790 to 2007)
	Population (millions)	(1790 to 2007)
	Dow Jones Average	(1885 to 2007)
	UK
	Retail Price Index*	(1265 to 2007)
	Nominal Earnings	(1265 to 2006)
	Real Earnings	(1265 to 2006)
	Nominal GDP	(1830 to 2006)
	Real GDP	(1830 to 2006)
	GDP Deflator*	(1830 to 2006)
	Nominal GDP per capita	(1830 to 2006)
	Real GDP per capita	(1830 to 2006)
	Population (millions)	(1830 to 2006)
	Gold
	US Official Price	(1786 to 2007)
	British Official Price	(1257 to 1945)
	New York Market Price	(1791 to 2007)
	London Market Price	(1950 to 2007)
	Gold/Silver Price Ratio	(1687 to 2006)
The growth rates of the price indexes, marked *, can be interpreted as average inflation or deflation during the period specified.
Why Not 2007 or 2008?

The annualized growth rate is the average growth rate measured over a year. In other words, it is the hypothetical constant year-to-year growth rate necessary to take the beginning-year value of a series to its ending-year value. To understand the construction of the hypothetical growth rate, see how the growth rates are constructed. Note that, contrary to intuition, this uniform growth rate is not obtained by averaging the year-to-year percentage changes in the observed value of the series. Because most economic variables grow over time, the annualized growth rate is a useful computation for comparing rates of growth of a given series for various time periods and of different series over the same time period.

This point is illustrated by the following examples of how the growth rate of GDP can vary, depending on the time period of the computation.

• General knowledge of history tells us that growth during the Great Depression of the 1930s was slower than during the "economic boom" of the 1960s. Using the calculator, one can put numbers on the comparison. U.S. real GDP grew at only 0.9 percent per year during from 1931 to 1935, but 4.65 percent during the 1960s.
• Economic historians often ask: did the U.S. economy "take off" after the Civil War? The answer, from the calculator, is negative. The annual average growth of real GDP for 1840 to 1860 (the last antebellum year) is 4.9 percent; while from 1866 (the first postbellum year) to 1886, the growth rate is somewhat less, at 4.6 percent.