Alvin Hansen coined the term “secular stagnation” in a 1938 speech about prolonged economic weakness.
Hansen was a prominent American economist and a leading interpreter of Keynesian economics. In his address, he argued that slowing population growth, fewer opportunities for territorial expansion, and a reduced pace of technological innovation could weaken investment and economic growth for a long period.
The idea was controversial because the United States soon entered a period of rapid expansion associated with World War II and the postwar economy. The phrase later returned to economic debate, especially after the global financial crisis, when some economists used it to describe persistently weak demand, low interest rates, and sluggish productivity growth.
“Secular” means long-lasting or structural in this context, not merely related to a short business-cycle recession. Secular stagnation is therefore a hypothesis about extended weakness, not the name of one specific recession or a precise official statistical category.