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Photographer: Yorgos Karahalis/Bloomberg Photographer: Yorgos Karahalis/Bloomberg

Greece's third bailout agreement in five years was passed by the country's Parliament earlier this week, despite a national referendum that rejected new austerity measures. The resulting collapse of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras' Syriza-led coalition and the protests that erupted in Athens showed that many in Greece are still asking themselves whether the ultimate prize — continued euro membership — is worth the pain of more austerity. History might have some answers.

1. GDP per capita

Membership in the single currency was initially great for the Greeks. The size of their economy (on a per person basis) rose by 25 percent, and came very close to reaching the European Union average. Then Greeks watched in horror as the global recession and later their own debt crisis erased all those gains in just a few short years. By 2012, Greeks' per capita share of real GDP was the same as in 2001 and had fallen to 74 percent of the EU average.

2. The stock market

If we take the Athens Stock Exchange as a proxy for the corporate sector, it's even harder to see the euro's benefits to Greece's companies. While there was a prolonged recovery in the market between 2003 and 2007, the main index never returned to its pre-euro record level of 6,355 and has since fallen to below 800.

3. Trade

One positive benefit you'd certainly expect to accrue to Greece from joining the euro is a big surge in how much trade it conducts with the countries it now shares a currency with. That's exactly what happened. Compared to $4.5 billion in Greek exports to euro-area countries in 2000, before it joined, that figure rose to $11.2 billion in 2014. The only wrinkle is that over the same period Greece increased its exports to non-euro countries by even more, from around $6.5 billion to nearly $24.8 billion, undermining a key argument in favor of creating a currency union in the first place.

4. Jobless youth

Turning to the labor market, it should be noted that the unemployment rate was already falling by the time Greece joined the euro. Still, the first few years in the single currency zone saw fewer and fewer Greeks out of work, with an especially impressive drop in the country's unemployment rate among 15 to 24 year-olds. That was particularly good news for an economy that has long sidelined far too many of its willing and able young workers. With the global recession and the continuing debt turmoil, that progress has long since evaporated. Youth unemployment is now above 50 percent, the second highest rate globally, according to the World Bank.

5. Savings

Lastly, while Greeks had maintained savings worth over 16 percent of national GDP for much of the late 1990s, access to increasingly cheaper credit facilitated a multi-year spending spree. The savings rate then plummeted to as low as 4 percent. Now that the cheap credit is gone and a long recession has made consumers more conservative, Greeks are once again squirreling away money. By 2013 the country had the equivalent of nearly 11 percent of GDP saved up. It's not enough to pay off the government's crippling debt, but it's a start.

(For more economic analysis, see Benchmark.)