In recent years, a reduction in income growth rates has emerged, affecting practically the whole world. In past centuries, the reduction in growth rates in the most advanced countries occurred after they had passed the ’roaring’ years of industrialisation. The high number of innovations introduced has meant that the phases of stagnation were considerably limited. After the first Great Depression at the end of the nineteenth century, the prospect of stagnation became much more valid after the Great Crisis, which lasted practically throughout the 1930s and was overcome only by the significant increase in military expenditures. After the war, a substantial and long reduction in the growth rate occurred first following the oil crises in the Seventies, and then, with reference to Japan and Europe, for different reasons.