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Postgrowth and Wellbeing

Koch, Max LU and Buchs, Milena (2017)
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... (More)
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.


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Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
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organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to conference
publication status
published
subject
keywords
Growth, Postgrowth, Wellbeing, Welfare
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
1966ac32-47c2-48c9-a7ca-0c26fb1b1f75
date added to LUP
2017-05-18 08:09:56
date last changed
2021-09-15 04:01:16
@misc{1966ac32-47c2-48c9-a7ca-0c26fb1b1f75,
  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.<br/><br/><br/>}},
  author       = {{Koch, Max and Buchs, Milena}},
  keywords     = {{Growth; Postgrowth; Wellbeing; Welfare}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  month        = {{05}},
  title        = {{Postgrowth and Wellbeing}},
  year         = {{2017}},
}