Postgrowth and Wellbeing

Abstract

An increasing number of scholars now argues that our societies will need to abandon economic growth as the prime economic goal if we are to prevent catastrophic climate change and sustainably manage non-renewable resources in the long run. While we agree that it will be necessary to end economic growth, we stress that current claims about the feasibility to maintain and improve human welfare and wellbeing under post-growth require more critical debate. We demonstrate that the relationship between happiness and economic growth is more complex than claimed by some post- and degrowth authors; propose that this debate should adopt a more comprehensive concept of wellbeing which also relates to theories of human need; and argue that further work is required to understand possible implications of rapid and radical socio-economic change towards post-growth for human welfare and wellbeing. (Less)