Backwardness was perpetuated in the Central and East European region during the entire modern period. After a series of failed attempts to modernize, the average per capita income level in the region remained about half that of the West. That was the case in 1870, and with some fluctuation, it hardly changed for a century. During the 1970s–'80s, it declined to 40 percent of the Western level, and by the mid-1990s to less than one-third of it.

This failure was especially painful since other European laggards on the Mediterranean and Northern peripheries had broken out from backwardness: it happened to the Northern countries before the middle of the twentieth century. Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland, on average, reached 65% of the West European per capita GDP in 1870, but had surpassed the West by 3% in 1950. Finland's per capita GDP was hardly more than half that of the Western level in 1870 and 81 percent of it in 1950, but it surpassed the Western average at the end of the century.

The Mediterranean countries and Ireland accomplished a successful catching-up process after World War II, and in particular after 1973. In 1950, the average per capita income level of Spain, Portugal, and Greece stood at only 39% of the West European level, less than that of Central and Eastern Europe. By 1973, however, Southern European per capita income slightly surpassed that of Central and Eastern Europe's, at 49% of the Western level.