Given that the graph above came from a post I did in 2023, Poland For The Win, the following news should not have come as a surprise to me, yet it did:

Poland, a Soviet-dominated communist state until 1989, is expected by next year to have higher economic output per person than Japan. For perspective, according to the World Bank (all of these numbers are adjusted for inflation and purchasing power between countries), Poland’s GDP per capita was $12,810 in 1990. That was roughly the same as Brazil’s and over $4,000 behind Mexico’s. Japan’s was almost three times higher, at $35,306. In 2023, the most recent year with available data, Japan’s was $45,949 and Poland’s was less than $2,500 behind, at $43,585. A gap of over $30,000 per person, gone in one generation.

Read the whole article as they analyse why Poland has done better than other ex-communist nations that joined the EU at the same time. One factor emphasised is that although the EU membership is a big factor it can’t be the primary driver of this success, otherwise those other nations would have done as well as Poland:

While countries such as the Czech Republic and Slovenia are still ahead of Poland today, they are not nearly as far ahead as they were in 2004. If EU accession was the determining factor in growth, then Poland shouldn’t have been able to close this gap as much as it has. Similarly, if Poland is merely reaping the dividends of catch-up growth, since it was still second-poorest in 2004, then it should not have been able to leave other similarly poor countries that also joined the EU at the same time, such as Latvia and Slovakia, in the dust. Lithuania has performed slightly better than Poland since EU membership, and it has pursued similar market reforms along with smart tax reforms. It also benefits from its border with Poland.

Of course a big reason is that on the other side of the coin, Japan’s GDP growth has been abysmal for three decades now, not helped by its population decline due to birth rates below replacement level, as also seen with South Korea.

It also should be noted that the fertility rate in Poland in 2023 was 1.16 children per woman, which means they’re on the same path of decline in the long-term of that’s not turned around.

Still, it’s good news for a nation that’s suffered almost nothing but bad news for the last two centuries. Clearly it’s time I converted the tag “Poland” into a category; they’re about to become a lot more important in Europe, for more reasons than just their economy.