Eight of the countries were in Asia.1 We share many of the characteristics of these countries in terms of openness of the economy, macroeconomic stability, and market based resource allocation. One key difference however, is that all these countries had savings and investment ratios in excess of 25 percent of GDP and often over 30 percent.
Over the past three decades our net national savings rate averaged only three percent of GDP – almost five percentage points below the OECD median.