Does working less explain Europe’s GDP per capita gap with America?

This week, I came across two Our World in Data charts on Europe’s productivity gap with America and went down a bit of an econ rabbit hole. In the output-per-hour series, German productivity more than doubled between 1990 and 2022, compared with a roughly 70 per cent increase in America: Yet America pulled ahead on GDP per person. With all the Euro summer memes1 in the back of my mind, I thought perhaps Europeans had just used some of their productivity gains to buy time off, while Americans kept working and took the money. I then found one problem with reading the difference as time off, and shortly afterwards, many more. The charts use different GDP measures (as well as different end years). The productivity series adjusts international prices across several benchmark years. For comparing growth, the Penn World Table recommends its national-accounts measure. Using that measure for both countries, I get hourly productivity growth of 61 per cent in Germany and 68 per cent in America…