TY - JOUR

T1 - 15 years of degrowth research

T2 - A systematic review

AU - Engler, John Oliver

AU - Kretschmer, Max Friedemann

AU - Rathgens, Julius

AU - Ament, Joe A.

AU - Huth, Thomas

AU - von Wehrden, Henrik

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2024 The Authors

PY - 2024/4/1

Y1 - 2024/4/1

N2 - In academia and political debates, the notions of ‘degrowth’ has gained traction since the dawn of the 21st century. While some uncertainty around its exact definition remains, research on degrowth revolves around the idea of reducing resource and energy throughput as a unifying theme. We employ a mixed-methods design to systematically review the scientific peer-reviewed English literature from 2008 to 2022 that refers to ‘degrowth’ or ‘post-growth’ in title, keywords or abstract (N = 951). We find a lack of concrete distributional and monetary policy proposals in the sample analyzed, and a low overall degree of collaboration among authors in relation to degrowth's age and size. The scientific peer-reviewed literature analyzed can be grouped into seven clusters along two major gradients, one along methodology (qualitative-quantitative) and the other along scale-of-analysis (individual-societal). We conclude that the academic literature about degrowth would benefit from a more prominent discussion of the political implications of its ideas and proposals, and that in particular the debate about distributional policy implications of degrowth should be more prominent and concrete, with a stronger focus on distributional policies in a degrowing economy.

AB - In academia and political debates, the notions of ‘degrowth’ has gained traction since the dawn of the 21st century. While some uncertainty around its exact definition remains, research on degrowth revolves around the idea of reducing resource and energy throughput as a unifying theme. We employ a mixed-methods design to systematically review the scientific peer-reviewed English literature from 2008 to 2022 that refers to ‘degrowth’ or ‘post-growth’ in title, keywords or abstract (N = 951). We find a lack of concrete distributional and monetary policy proposals in the sample analyzed, and a low overall degree of collaboration among authors in relation to degrowth's age and size. The scientific peer-reviewed literature analyzed can be grouped into seven clusters along two major gradients, one along methodology (qualitative-quantitative) and the other along scale-of-analysis (individual-societal). We conclude that the academic literature about degrowth would benefit from a more prominent discussion of the political implications of its ideas and proposals, and that in particular the debate about distributional policy implications of degrowth should be more prominent and concrete, with a stronger focus on distributional policies in a degrowing economy.

KW - Degrowth

KW - Distributional policy

KW - Economic growth

KW - Monetary growth imperative

KW - Monetary policy

KW - Postgrowth

KW - B29 B59 D30 E40 Q57

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85182352108&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2023.108101

DO - 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2023.108101

M3 - Journal articles

AN - SCOPUS:85182352108

VL - 218

JO - Ecological Economics

JF - Ecological Economics

SN - 0921-8009

M1 - 108101

ER -