Here’s The Stat from the May 2025 issue of National Review:

2026 — the year Poland’s GDP per capita is projected to surpass Japan’s, according to data from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

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. According to the IMF, Japan’s economy slightly contracted in 2024, and projected growth is around 1 percent in 2025 and 2026. Poland grew at nearly 3 percent in 2024, and projected growth is greater than 3 percent in 2025 and 2026. Why have you heard little about this decades-long and ongoing economic success story? Probably because it wasn’t the result of industrial policy or some other government plan. Under the guidance of economist Leszek Balcerowicz, Poland went all in on free markets during its transition to democracy. It has averaged annual GDP growth of about 4 percent per year since 1990, blowing right past the “middle-income trap” and joining the ranks of the great developed economies such as Japan. As late as the early 1990s, it was still fashionable to believe that Japan was going to inherit the earth as a result of its industrial policy. Imagine explaining to someone then that in your lifetime the average Pole would become wealthier than the average Japanese. Be skeptical of industrial policies, and never underestimate the power of markets.

Any cross-country economic comparison is going to be complicated because there are so many factors involved. A major one that some people might point to instead of free markets to explain Poland’s success is its membership in the European Union. EU membership has no doubt been good for Poland’s economy, as it has been for all of the former communist states that have joined.

But if EU membership was the primary driver, then we’d expect the other countries that joined the EU at the same time as Poland to have performed similarly. Poland was one of ten countries to join the EU in 2004 (the others were Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Slovakia, and Slovenia). Here are those ten countries’ economic performance, measured by GDP per capita at purchasing power parity, since 1990, around the fall of communism:

Poland’s growth is different from the other countries’. For one, it has been much more consistent, with steady growth over the entire span since 1990, including the years before EU membership. Cyprus and Estonia are all over the place. Poland did not have a recession in 2008-2009; all of the other countries did. If EU membership was the determining factor in the steadiness of Poland’s growth, then the other countries that joined at the same time should have the same results, but they do not.

Poland added $31,339 to its GDP per capita at PPP between 1990 and 2023. The only one of these ten countries to have added more is Malta, which is a small island country that really isn’t comparable to the others on the list for a variety of reasons, including that it was never communist. Hungary, the laggard by this metric, is only $19,096 better off, and Latvia, the second-poorest after Poland in 1990, is only $20,119 better off.

At the fall of communism, Poland ranked tenth out of these ten countries. Today, it ranks sixth. The only country to have improved its ordinal ranking by more is, again, Malta. Many of the other countries have fallen in rank since 1990. Hungary was fourth; today it is eighth. The Czech Republic was first; today it is third (though the only ones ahead of it are the Mediterranean island countries). Slovenia, Estonia, Slovakia, and Latvia have each fallen by one spot.

Poland’s outperformance also shows if you choose as the starting point 2004, the year of EU membership for all of these countries. Here’s a chart comparing GDP per capita at PPP in 2004 with the most recent data in 2023:

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.

It’s hard to say factors such as age of the population are the explanation for Poland’s overperformance since it has very similar demographic profiles to many of these other countries. Many of them also have Slavic cultures, so culture is probably not the determining factor either. Maybe you don’t like PPP methodology, but the same methodology is used for every country here, so it wouldn’t make any one country look better or worse than another on its own. (You can play with the data yourself here.)

This is hardly a comprehensive look at the comparative economics of these countries. Poland is an outlier in terms of size, with by far the largest population of any of these ten. But it is also an outlier in the ferocity with which it adopted markets after the fall of communism. The Balcerowicz Plan was one of the foremost examples of “shock therapy” in the 1990s, and the government stuck by it even when it led to significant increases in unemployment as the old communist system was being supplanted. Poland’s growth should be an inspiration to free market supporters worldwide.