Post-growth: the science of wellbeing within planetary boundaries

There are increasing concerns that continued economic growth in high-income countries might not be environmentally
sustainable, socially beneficial, or economically achievable. In this Review, we explore the rapidly advancing field of
post-growth research, which has evolved in response to these concerns. The central idea of post-growth is to replace
the goal of increasing GDP with the goal of improving human wellbeing within planetary boundaries. Key advances
discussed in this Review include: the development of ecological macroeconomic models that test policies for
managing without growth; understanding and reducing the growth dependencies that tie social welfare to increasing
GDP in the current economy; and characterising the policies and provisioning systems that would allow resource use
to be reduced while improving human wellbeing. Despite recent advances in post-growth research, important
questions remain, such as the politics of transition, and transformations in the relationship between the Global North
and the Global South.