Degrowth: is there any consensus on whether it might be a good idea?

The global economy has grown dramatically since the industrial revolution with huge increases in population and life expectancy across the world. While this rapid expansion has undoubtedly led to enormous improvements in the lives and livelihoods of many, it has come at an ecological cost.

Concerns with the existential risks related to this unbridled economic growth have been expressed since the early days of the industrial revolution (for example, Malthus, 1798; Mill, 1848; and Jevons, 1865).

The emphasis of these discourses then shifted in the 1970s towards existential catastrophe related to resource use and environmental pressures. Some believed that this could only be avoided through degrowth. This idea was framed in the influential report Limits to Growth as ‘alter[ing] these growth trends and to establish a condition of ecological and economic stability that is sustainable far into the future’ (Meadows et al, 1972).

Degrowth became the latest element in a long line of critiques of economic growth (Arndt, 1987) and there has been a great deal of study of the subject both in the 1970s and the decades since (Georgescu-Roegen, 1971; Baykan, 2007; Jackson; 2009; Kallis et al, 2018; Kallis, 2019; Schmelzer et al, 2022; and Diesendorf et al, 2024).

One definition of degrowth is a planned reduction in energy and resource use in an economy (Hickel, 2020). The work on this topic typically uses planetary boundaries as a motivating influence (Hickel, 2020, 2021; and Schmelzer et al, 2022). This is a paradigm that places subjective boundaries on earth system processes (Rockstrom et al, 2009; and Steffen et al, 2018) and for which the latest planetary boundary assessment states that six of the nine boundaries have been breached, including biosphere integrity and biogeochemical flows.

Degrowth has become more popular in recent times. This is evidenced by looking at mentions of the concept and the associated term ‘post-growth’ (the distinction appears to be primarily nomenclature) on Google Ngram – that is, the relative frequency of these words in the corpus of work digitised by Google, starting in 1970 (see Figure 1).

The influence of the first international conference on degrowth in 2008, hosted in Paris, is also clear in Figure 1. The majority of scholars active in this area are European, so perhaps they were spurred by greater awareness of the concept. Alternatively, as one study argues, do we see an increase in the popularity of degrowth because economies in Western Europe have ‘degrown’, that is, they have stagnated and/or experienced a decline in GDP growth (Naudé, 2023, 2023b)?

Figure 1: Mentions of degrowth and post-growth, Google Ngram frequency

Source: Google

Nevertheless, degrowth is still a relatively niche concept. For example, references to it are superseded by references to ‘limits to growth’ (the 1972 report had been cited 34,920 times as of September 2024 per Google Scholar) and everything is dwarfed by ‘economic growth’.

Figure 2: Mentions of degrowth, economic growth, limits to growth and post-growth, Google Ngram frequency

Source: Google

Yet degrowth still garners attention. A recent review of degrowth studies was widely circulated on social media – a post by Rutger Bregman on X had 1.3 million views as of 24 September 2024 – because it purportedly showed flaws in the methodology of degrowth. The same research was then subsequently reviewed by an article in the Financial Times.

This article outlines the core concepts behind degrowth and addresses three recent systematic reviews (note, the latest review has a publication date of 2025).

What is degrowth?

Defining what advocates mean by degrowth is a challenge as there is such a variety of interpretations. The idea has come to mean everything to everyone. What’s more, ‘degrowth proposals are to a certain extent utopian’ (Kallis et al, 2018).

Taking the definition of some of the most prominent scholars in the field of degrowth, then:

‘Degrowth is defined by ecological economists as an equitable downscaling of throughput, with a concomitant securing of wellbeing. If there is a fundamental coupling of economic activity and resource use, as ecological economics suggests there is, then serious environmental or climate policies will slow down the economy. Vice versa, a slower economy will use fewer resources and emit less carbon. This is not the same as saying that the degrowth goal is to reduce GDP; slowing down the economy is not an end but a likely outcome in a transition toward equitable wellbeing and environmental sustainability’ (Kallis et al, 2018).

 Some define degrowth in ecological terms, describing it as: ‘socially sustainable reduction of society’s throughput (or metabolism)’ which is ‘incompatible with further economic growth, and will entail in all likelihood economic (GDP) degrowth’ (Kallis, 2011, 2017; see also Georgescu-Roegen, 1971; and Meadows et al, 1972).

Further GDP growth is criticised because of its implied increased use of resources and energy and its waste. This is coupled with the belief that it is unrealistic to think that technological improvement and efficiency gains will allow us to prevent climate change and remove ‘pressure on other planetary boundaries’ (Hickel 2020; 2021).

Others refer to degrowth as ‘an umbrella concept that brings together a wide[r] array of ideas and social struggles’ with the idea of an ‘ecological emergency’ arising from the crossing of several planetary boundaries (Mastinia et al, 2021).

Climate change is not the sole concern of degrowth, which also emphasises reducing resource use more generally. The concept has been described as a political agenda to ‘plan our way out of ecological catastrophe’ (Kallis, 2011).

It is also seen as a possible way to mitigate carbon emissions in line with climate targets set out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC (Kallis, 2017; Keyßer and Lenzen, 2021; and Hickel et al, 2022). At its most extreme, degrowth is being advocated as a way for local communities to isolate from global climate risk (Ajulo et al, 2020).

Degrowth has been criticised for ambiguity and lack of conceptual coherence (van den Bergh, 2011). But some argue that this is to be expected for a normative social science – in other words, a social science where values are being critically assessed and do not fall neatly into positivist approaches to scientific measurement and testing (Kallis, 2011)

Assuming that capitalism requires continued growth (see, for example, Harvey, 2007), where ‘growth is functional in maintaining economic and social stability’ (Jackson, 2009), the proposed degrowth solutions imply an anti-capitalist redistribution (Harvey, 2014).

Indeed, some authors view the capitalist system as the underlying cause of environmental issues such as climate change (for example, Hickel, 2020; and Schmelzer et al, 2022). They argue that moving away from a capitalist system and curbing economic growth will help the planet. Although this line of argument overlooks thorny issues such as the fact that the Chernobyl nuclear accident occurred under the rival communist economic system, one defence is that ‘communist regimes also sought continuous – state rather than private – accumulation and growth’ (Kallis 2011).

For some, degrowth implies reduced spending on goods, including some types of public goods, and less investment in new technology:

‘we will have to do with less high-speed transport infrastructures, space missions for tourists, new airports, or factories producing unnecessary gadgets, faster cars or better televisions. We may still need more renewable energy infrastructures, better social (education, and health) services, more public squares or theatres, and localised organic food production and retailing centres’ (Kallis, 2011).

For critics, this line of thinking fails to appreciate that reduced GDP (degrowth) implies lower investment in technologies, such as those necessary for renewable energy (van den Bergh, 2011). Yet GDP reduction from lower investment is seen as central to degrowth and reduced consumption (Kallis et al, 2018). As degrowth advocates put it, technological advancements must be financed via degrowth (Mastinia et al, 2021), although how this can be achieved is not clearly outlined.

There are of course more formal, mathematically derived macroeconomic models of degrowth (see Lange, 2022 for further elucidation), but this discussion is intended to be a brief summary of the theory of degrowth.

What does research tell us about degrowth?

There have been several reviews of studies of degrowth (one of the most cited is Kallis et al, 2018, but this focuses not only on degrowth but also the history of GDP and economic growth, among other topics).

This review cites 150 pieces of scholarly work but of these, 50 are books and many of these have absolutely nothing to do with degrowth. For example, GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History by Diane Coyle (Bennett Institute and a lead editor of the Economics Observatory) is cited but it is most clearly not a treatise on degrowth.

Further, there are 81 articles cited in this review but 14 of them came from a 2018 special issue on ‘technology and degrowth’ published in the Journal of Cleaner Production. So while the review is optimistic about degrowth and the ability to ‘anticipate degrowth utopias’, it is not a very robust approach as the research is selectively cited to align with the perspective of the authors who are degrowth advocates.

The gold standard of studies of research – or literature reviews – is a systematic review that attempts to examine all work on a topic in a systematic way. Such reviews are commonly used in medical research as a way for clinicians to keep up to date with developments (Prisma, 2020).

There are now well-defined reporting procedures for systematic reviews (Page et al, 2021). For example, before undertaking a systematic review, the guidance is to ‘check whether there are already existing or ongoing reviews, and whether a new review is justified’ (Centre for Reviews and Dissemination, 2009).

A systematic review starts with a research question, then search terms are designed, these are then applied to a research repository, such as Scopus, Web of Science or Google Scholar, each with their own pros and cons. It then enters a search term, and the results are filtered, with irrelevant studies excluded. The selection of papers is then reviewed by the research team.

There should be clear inclusion/exclusion criteria outlined. Ideally, there should be a clear hierarchy of study designs to evaluate the evidence. As the systematic review approach is predominantly used in medical research, this goes from randomised control trials to quasi-experimental to observational, as these are the methods that can best determine causal inference of a treatment versus a control. But applying the systematic review approach outside medical settings involves clear weighting to conceptual/theoretical analyses versus applied approaches.

Here we see an issue because much of the degrowth research is theoretical/conceptual in nature. It envisages future possibilities and hence there can be no empirical evidence of the nature provided in medical research (answers to questions such as ‘does drug X work?’).

Three systematic reviews of degrowth have been published in Ecological Economics, the journal of the International Society for Ecological Economics, in close proximity: September 2023 (Engler et al, 2024), October 2023 (Savin and van den Bergh 2024), and February 2024 (Lauer et al, 2025). Oddly, despite apparently following similar search protocols, the reviews come to some different conclusions.

Table 1: Summary of systematic review search and results

Looking at the search protocols in more detail, we can see some clear differentiation. For example, the search terms of for one review look for the keywords in the article title, abstract or keywords (Engler et al, 2024), whereas another only looks at titles (Savin and van den Bergh, 2024). All three reviews search for the same keywords but one (Lauer et al, 2025) also includes the term ‘model’.

Further, one review (Engler et al, 2024) attempts to distinguish between degrowth as a social movement and as an academic discipline. As such, the authors choose to select only peer-reviewed articles, arguing that this is the best way to distinguish between the two. The third review listed in Table 1 (Lauer et al, 2025) selects anything that includes a ‘model’, but again the majority of studies are peer-reviewed articles.

By contrast, the other review (Savin and van den Bergh, 2024) is not focused on peer-reviewed articles alone and also includes other forms of publication. It excludes books (because they are deemed to be a summary of existing papers) and any papers to which the authors did not have access.

Other differences pertain to the time period of the study and details of the search terms. The reference period for one study (Savin and van den Bergh, 2024) is unspecified so it is not possible to make a clear comparison. Further, two of the studies (Engler et al, 2024 and Lauer et al, 2025) include the full search terms used so these reviews could be replicated on Scopus/Google Scholar (but this is not done by Savin and van den Bergh, 2024).

Unsurprisingly with different search parameters, the studies come to some different conclusions about the academic work on degrowth. What’s more, while it is also unclear if they found the same studies since the number of studies reviewed differs, it is safe to assume that different studies were reviewed.

The three reviews also identify varying numbers of theoretical analyses. For example, in one review, only 1.9% of the sample uses a theoretical model (nine studies), 1.4% employ an empirical model, 5.5% (31 studies) use quantitative data analysis and 4.1% use qualitative data analysis (23 studies) (Savin and van den Bergh, 2024). This leads the authors to conclude that the research is overwhelmingly opinion-based and does not reach a high research standard. Not only this, but they also note: ‘both qualitative and quantitative studies tend to not satisfy standards for good research’.

Yet the others two studies identify many more theoretical studies and empirical models (75 studies that use models to simulate the effect of degrowth policies in Lauer et al, 2025 and 107 papers that employ quantitative modelling in Engler et al, 2024).

So, are there only a handful of studies that use quantitative methods to assess degrowth? From these systematic reviews, we are none the wiser. But as two of the three reviews conclude that there is a strong strand of quantitative research, presumably this implies that there is.

The ontology and reflexivity of the research teams could possibly explain differences, particularly in what was considered to be valid research. One of the key arguments of proponents of degrowth is that it is a planned reduction and that a recession would not constitute degrowth. But if choices made by or on behalf of society (for example, reduced investment) led to degrowth, would this be a planned reduction or an unintended consequence?

For example, according to the authors of one study, a recession does not constitute degrowth and they see studies based on declining GDP as ‘reverse causation’ because degrowth was applied to something that was not purposefully degrowth policy but due to other external factors such as the global financial crisis of 2007-09 (Savin and van den Bergh, 2024).

There is agreement that there is a lack of a coherent definition of what is degrowth and/or postgrowth within the research. The multiple definitions have created difficulties for modelling and testing this theory as it is not clearly specified. The lack of concise theoretical specification makes modelling parameters difficult.

Another issue relates to the lack of clearly defined policy proposals. One study is particularly critical of this (Engler et al, 2024). But one could argue that looking at peer-reviewed academic articles is not the place to find detailed policy proposals. Many of the proposals identified imply a radical restricting of the existing social order, such as redistribution, which is a challenge to model using the conventional modelling toolkit.

There is agreement on a clustering within the research on degrowth. This is centred around a core group of authors that can be identified as the ‘Barcelona school of ecological economic and political ecology’ because many of the authors have close affiliation with the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.

Two of the studies identify Spain as the country with the most active degrowth researchers (Engler et al, 2024; and Savin and van den Bergh, 2024). But there is disagreement over which country is the second biggest producer of research on degrowth between Sweden (Engler et al, 2024) and the UK (Savin and van den Bergh, 2024). Either way, it is a European dominated research area. Perhaps this is why European economies have stagnated relative to peers in Asia and the United States?

Why haven’t economists engaged with work on degrowth?

What is missing from the various literature reviews on degrowth is reference to any criticism of the concept within economics journals. A search of Web of Science for ‘degrowth’, ‘de-growth’, ‘post-growth’ or ‘postgrowth’ finds only three articles in mainstream economics journals and none in what the field considers to be the top five journals.

Of the three, only one is actually related to degrowth as a concept. One study develops a two-country (poor and rich) model to assess degrowth from the perspective of inter- and intra-generational welfare and shows that an egalitarian degrowth path involves growth in a poor country and degrowth in a rich country (Martinet et al, 2022).

Within economics publications, there is also a critique of the premise of degrowth (Jakob and Edenhofer, 2014). Another shows that if capital does not grow fast enough, degrowth is possible (Bosi et al, 2023 – this is a discrete time version of a previous paper: Lucas, 1988).

As the work on degrowth draws inspiration from Limits to Growth, or rather an ‘advanced reincarnation’ as Kallis and March (2015) see it,perhaps this is the reason why we can see a lack of engagement. Limits to Growth had predicted an ‘overshoot and collapse’ of the global economy. It was highly influential and, unlike degrowth, caught the attention of mainstream economists.

Limits to Growth was based on a systems dynamic model – a mathematical model to help to explain complex systems and how they change over time – written by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) engineering professor Jay Forrester (World Dynamics). Critics argued that changing some key assumptions in the model changed the outcome dramatically (Nordhaus, 1973) and dismissed updates to Limits to Growth as ‘lethal model 2’.

From a neoclassical perspective, growth has not (yet) been constrained by a lack of resources, partly because technological advances enable us to generate more from less, and partly because of market forces (Weitzman, 1999). When a product or commodity becomes more expensive, people either use less of it or switch to an alternative. Further, models also indicate no limits to growth and show how environmental quality can improve with growth (John and Pecchenino, 1994; Stokey, 1998).

So, case closed? From a mainstream economics perspective, it would seem so; but not necessarily for proponents of Limits to Growth. There was a response to criticisms (from Nordhaus), which argued that the critique was wrong and misinterpreted the model (Forrester et al, 1974). Forrester alleged that he was not given a right of reply to the Nordhaus critique by the Economic Journal (Myrtveit, 2005).

For Forrester, the systems model should be analysed as a whole and not broken into subcomponents, as was done by Nordhaus, because this was how the system interacts and this is what drives the results. While Nordhaus had portrayed Forrester as a neo-Malthusian peddling a disproven theory – that population growth was positively correlated with income growth – Forrester embraced this identity and instead accused Nordhaus of misunderstanding Malthus!

The main issue appears to be a different perspective on the Limits to Growth debate. For economists, the debate was won and there is therefore no need for further engagement with proponents of Limits to Growth (degrowthers).

For systems thinkers, they too have been vindicated. Some found that the Limits to Growth model fitted data 30 years on (Turner, 2008) or even became more relevant over time (Bardi, 2011). There have been no further updates to Limits to Growth, but there are studies updating the models (Herrington, 2020). The most recent update to the World3 model shows a similar overshoot and collapse outcome to the original model (Nebel et al, 2023).

Effectively, this is an unsettled scientific controversy where recourse to facts or theory cannot resolve the controversy as both sides see the world in different ways (see, for example, Engelhardt and Caplan (eds), 1987).

One academic noted that if the World3 model was run from say 1600 or 1800, it would show collapse a century later (Kelly, 1995). This was a clear test of the model’s assumptions, but it was not something done by the original research team. The model would also not predict the industrial revolution and, as Dana Meadows explained to Kelly, nor could the model ‘take the world from the Industrial Revolution to whatever follows next beyond that’. The World3 model was designed to show collapse around a century later.

Conclusion

In summary, there is a social movement in Europe that has adopted degrowth as a its mantra. The goal of degrowthers is to reduce economic growth as a solution to environmental problems.

They are motivated by Limits to Growth and planetary boundaries – the former was an influential model from the 1970s, the latter an influential paradigm from the 2000s (and which is also highly influenced by the Limits to Growth as Johan Rockstrom acknowledged at a webinar for the 50^th anniversary of the report’s publication). The degrowth approach does not see technological solutions as an alternative to degrowth as, in many cases, these are seen as synonymous with growth (Kallis et al, 2018).

As this is effectively an unresolved scientific controversy and one that may be irresolvable, perhaps the final word should go to an authoritative scientific figure. John von Neumann, a polymath who was regarded as ‘the smartest man that ever lived’, anticipated many of the issues raised by degrowthers. In a 1955 essay in Fortune Magazine, he noted that ‘we begin to feel the effects of the finite, actual size of the earth in a critical way’.

Von Neumann highlighted various crises from nuclear risks to global warming from the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. But crucially, Von Neumann dismissed prohibiting technologies (that is, degrowth) as a ‘pseudosolution’ as it is difficult to isolate specific technologies from scientific progress: instead, he advocated for ‘patience, flexibility, and intelligence’.

Where can I find out more?

• We already live in a degrowth world, and we do not like it: Article for the IZA Institute of Labor Economics by Wim Naudé, 2023.
• Reviewing studies of degrowth: Are claims matched by data, methods and policy analysis? Article by Ivan Savin and Jeroen van den Bergh, 2024.
• Recalibration of limits to growth: An update of the World3 model: Article by Arjuna Nebel, Alexander Kling, Ruben Willamowski and Tim Schell, 2023.
• What does degrowth mean? Article by Jason Hickel, 2020.

Who are experts on this question?

• Wim Naudé
• Kate Raworth
• Cristian Ducoing
• Jeroen van den Bergh

Author: Eoin McLaughlin

Image: GettyTim82 on iStock