Zero Growth Economy

Zero growth economy is an economy in which total output and resource use are kept roughly constant rather than expanding year after year, often discussed as a steady-state or post-growth alternative to endless expansion. The idea has roots in John Stuart Mill's stationary state, and it was developed by Herman Daly, who argued that the economy is a subsystem of a finite biosphere, and by Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, who applied thermodynamics to economic processes. The Club of Rome's report The Limits to Growth gave it public prominence. Tim Jackson's Prosperity without Growth and Kate Raworth's doughnut economics argue that wellbeing need not depend on growth, and degrowth scholars such as Serge Latouche and Jason Hickel call for planned reductions in resource use in wealthy countries. Allan Schnaiberg's treadmill of production and John Bellamy Foster's metabolic rift explain why capitalism tends toward expansion. Critics respond that growth funds welfare, pensions, and poverty reduction, that green growth could decouple output from emissions, and that a zero growth economy might raise unemployment without major institutional change. Today the idea shapes debates on climate policy, inequality, work time, and the meaning of social progress.