Tim Jackson

publications 60 results

The False Economy of Big Food. And the case for a new food economy | Report

New analysis commissioned by the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission (FFCC) has found that the costs of Britain’s unhealthy food system amount to £268 billion every year – almost equivalent to the total annual UK healthcare spend. The report by Professor Tim Jackson provides the first comprehensive estimate of the food-related cost of chronic disease, caused by the current food system.

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WHO non-communicable diseases Global Monitoring Framework: Pandemic resilience in sub-Saharan Africa and Low-income Countries | Journal Paper

This study provides an empirical assessment of how effective the WHO’s Global Monitoring Framework for non-communicable diseases (NCDs) has been in improving COVID-19 resilience in low-income countries. Our findings suggest that future global health policies should focus on the link between NCDs and infectious diseases, especially for vulnerable populations.

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Health resilience and the global pandemic: the effect of social conditions on the COVID-19 mortality rate | Journal paper

This paper shows that countries with robust health-related policy targets aimed at reducing non-communicable diseases (NCDs) experienced significantly lower mortality rates during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic.

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Confronting the dilemma of growth. A response to Warlenius.

This commentary responds to a recent article purporting to identify ‘limits to degrowth’. This paper clarifies and sets in context the tensions between growth rates and decoupling rates on which the contested argument is based, disputing the claim that growth is the best way to achieve high rates of decoupling.

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Growth dependency in the welfare state | Journal Paper

Modern economies rely on economic growth for stability and prosperity, but this dependence is ecologically unsustainable. Understanding growth dependency is crucial. This paper proposes a sector-led framework to transform these reliances and disrupt their inevitability.

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Living well today and tomorrow: young people, good life narratives, and sustainability | Working Paper

In this working paper, Anastasia Loukianov, Kate Burningham and Tim Jackson explore young people’s use of shared social understandings to describe what is important in their present lives, to envision their futures, and to respond to the challenges they identify to the realisation of their good lives.

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Audiobook | Post Growth—Life After Capitalism, narrated by Tim Jackson

We are pleased to announce the release of the audiobook edition of Tim Jackson's prize-winning "Post Growth—Life After Capitalism". Through his own narration, Tim brings a personal touch to the profound themes of Post Growth, offering an accessible and engaging experience for audiences to absorb his insights on the go.

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Whose ‘flow’ is it anyway? The demographic correlates of ‘flow proneness’

This quantitative study of 4000 adults in the UK found that demographic factors only play a minimal role in explaining the likelihood of people being able to experience flow, suggesting that the rewards of flow may be available across society, irrespective of demographics.

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Post Growth and the North-South Divide: a post-Keynesian stock-flow consistent analysis | Working Paper

This working paper describes a two-region post-Keynesian stock-flow consistent macroeconomic model set out to analyse macroeconomic implications of a postgrowth transition in advanced countries on the economic and environmental conditions in the rest of the world

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Towards a Model of Baumol’s Cost Disease in a Postgrowth Economy—developments of the FALSTAFF stock-flow consistent (SFC) model

This working paper describes an extension of the stock-flow consistent FALSTAFF model to test the existence of a monetary growth imperative. The extension is designed to simulate the phenomenon known as Baumol’s cost disease which arises from the existence of differential labour productivity rates in a mixed economy.

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Degrowth can work—here’s how science can help | Nature Article

Wealthy countries can create prosperity while using less materials and energy if they abandon economic growth as an objective. This Nature comment piece together with Jason Hickel, Giorgos Kallis, Julia Steinberger and more is laying out the key challenges of a just post-growth transition.

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Sunak’s growth fetish is a problem: he’s heading for the same budget trap as Truss | The Guardian Opinion piece

The siren call of climate-burning expansion bewitches British politics. More of the same will emerge in the autumn statement, Tim Jackson writes. To all intents and purposes, we’re already living in a post-growth world. And it’s time to take that challenge seriously.

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What happens when investment firms take over UK care homes | Report and Briefing Paper

Through a series of in-depth interviews with care workers Christine Corlet Walker et al explore the impact of investment firms on working conditions and quality of care in UK care homes. Combined with an analysis of care company accounts generating insights into the impacts of financialisation on the UK care sector, the report shows how investment firms are using extreme strategies to reduce staffing levels and cut costs in the name of profit, with appalling consequences for care.

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The Problematic Role of Materialistic Values in the Pursuit of Sustainable Well-Being | Journal paper

Strong materialistic values help to maintain consumer capitalism, but they can have negative consequences for individual well-being, for social equity and for environmental sustainability. In this paper, we add to the existing literature on the adverse consequences of materialistic values by highlighting their negative association with engagement in attitudes and actions that support the achievement of sustainable well-being.

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A critique of the marketisation of long-term residential and nursing home care | Journal Paper

Long-term care systems across countries within the OECD have undergone a progressive marketisation and financialisation in recent decades. In this Personal View, we argue that the accomapnying neoliberal market values make poor guiding principles for the care sector, identifying the dysfunctional dynamics that arise as a result, and reflecting on the clinical implications of each, with a focus on facility-based care.

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Land is the new frontier to greenwash corporate sins | Letter to the Financial Times

Letter by John Meadley and CUSP director Tim Jackson to the Financial Times, highlighting the urgent need for decent land use policy, to prevent the same predatory financial practices prevalent in the social care sector from taking hold in rural communities too.

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Self-transcendent experiences and sustainable prosperity | Journal Paper

The achievement of sustainable prosperity requires the enhancement of human wellbeing alongside increased care for the environment. In this working paper, Patrick Elf, Amy Isham and Tim Jackson explore the emerging potential of Self-Transcendent Experiences (STEs) to deliver beneficial effects on human wellbeing and sustainable attitudes and behaviours.

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Beyond the Debt Controversy—Re-framing fiscal and monetary policy for a post-pandemic era | Working Paper and Policy Briefing

In the years since the financial crisis, a heated debate has broken out amongst macroeconomists about the appropriate roles of fiscal and monetary policy in managing public sector debt. This working paper and accompanying policy briefing introduce the main lines of argument on both sides of the controversy. We find i.a. that a return to fiscal austerity would be both dangerous and unjustified and that moving beyond ideology is key to the levelling-up agenda.

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Finding flow: exploring the potential for sustainable fulfilment | Journal Paper by Amy Isham and Tim Jackson

In this article, Amy Isham and Tim Jackson explore the dynamics of a psychological state known as flow. By synthesising the results of a series of experience sampling, survey, and experimental studies, we identify optimal activities that are shown to have low environmental costs and high levels of human wellbeing.

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Zero Carbon Sooner — Revised case for an early zero carbon target for the UK | Paper

This paper is an update of an earlier briefing note, revised to take account of new findings from the IPCC’s updated 6th Assessment Report (AR6). The broad aim of the paper is to establish how soon the UK should aim for (net) zero carbon emissions.

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Book launch: Wie wollen wir leben?—Tim Jackson in conversation with Barbara Unmüßig

On 18 October 2021, Tim Jackson talks to Barbara Unmüßig, director of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, about the German edition of his latest book Post Growth—’Wie wollen wir leben?’ (Oekom, 2021). The book is not just a manifesto for system change, but an invitation to rekindle a deeper conversation about the nature of the human condition.

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Materialistic values, flow experiences and the role of self-regulatory resources | Journal Paper

Previous research has shown that the possession of materialistic values can lead individuals to be less likely to experience flow, an important component of well-being. This study tested whether a lack of self-regulatory resources, and a tendency to use self-regulatory resources for avoidance purposes, can mediate this relationship.

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Tackling growth dependency—the case of adult social care | Report and Briefing

Paper by Christine Corlet Walker and Tim Jackson, presenting a systematic approach to identifying, analysing and transforming growth dependencies in the welfare state. Using adult social care as the case study, the paper explores how growing demand, rising costs and rent seeking can create growth dependencies.

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Confronting inequality in the “new normal”: Hyper‐capitalism, proto‐socialism, and post‐pandemic recovery | Journal Paper

Post‐pandemic recovery must address the systemic inequality that has been revealed by the coronavirus crisis. The roots of this inequality predate the pandemic and even the global financial crisis. They lie rather in the uneasy relationship between labor and capital under conditions of declining economic growth

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Welfare systems without economic growth | Review paper

Welfare systems across the OECD face many combined challenges, with rising inequality, demographic changes and environmental crises likely to drive up welfare demand in the coming decades. Economic growth is no longer a sustainable solution to these problems. It is therefore imperative that we consider how welfare systems will cope with these challenges in the absence of economic growth. This paper by Christine Corlet Walker, Angela Druckman together with Tim Jackson reviews the literature tackling this complex problem.

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Careless Finance—Operational and economic fragility in adult social care | CUSP Working Paper

Adult social care across the OECD is in crisis. Covid-19 has exposed deep fragilities. Principal amongst these is the process of marketisation and financialisation of the social care sector. In this paper, we take a critical perspective on this process. We find that marketisation has facilitated the conditions for both financial fragility and operational failure.

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Energy transition risk: The impact of declining energy return on investment (EROI) | Journal Paper

The TranSim modelling work shows that the negative effects associated with the transition—recession, stagnation, stagflation, increasing inequality and asset stranding—are positively related to the capital intensity of green energy production and reductions in EROI. Policy makers should pay close attention to the overall EROI of the entire energy system when determining energy policy. If significant reductions in EROI are unavoidable, then policy could be used to mitigate some of its negative economic effects.

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Worker wellbeing and productivity in advanced economies: Re-examining the link | Journal paper

Labour productivity is a key concept for understanding the way modern economies use resources and features prominently in ecological economics. Ecological economists have questioned the desirability of labour productivity growth on both environmental and social grounds. In this paper we aim to contribute to ongoing debates by focusing on the link between labour productivity and worker wellbeing.

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Modelling Transition Risk—Towards an Agent-Based, Stock-Flow Consistent Framework

This working paper summarises the initial findings of a project whose aim has been to develop an agent-based (AB), stock-flow-consistent (SFC) macroeconomic framework to study the economic, financial and social implications of the transition to a net zero carbon economy.

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Ensuring a Post-COVID Economic Agenda Tackles Global Biodiversity Loss | Journal Paper

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused dramatic and unprecedented impacts on both global health and economies. Many governments are now proposing recovery packages to get back to normal, but the 2019 Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Global Assessment indicated that business as usual has created widespread ecosystem degradation. Therefore, a post-COVID world needs to tackle the economic drivers that create ecological disruptions.

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The Transition to a Sustainable Prosperity | Journal Paper by Tim Jackson and Peter Victor

This paper presents a stock-flow consistent (SFC) macroeconomic simulation model for Canada. Contrary to the widely accepted view, the results suggest that ‘green growth’ (in the Carbon Reduction Scenario) may be slower than ‘brown growth’. More importantly, we show (in the Sustainable Prosperity Scenario) that improved environmental and social outcomes are possible even as the growth rate declines to zero.

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Materialism and the Experience of Flow | Journal paper by Amy Isham, Birgitta Gatersleben and Tim Jackson

The need to locate ways of living that can be both beneficial to personal well-being and ecologically sustainable is becoming increasingly important. Flow experiences show promise for the achievement of personal and ecological well-being. However, it is not yet understood how the materialistic values promoted by our consumer cultures may impact our ability to experience flow.

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Using critical slowing down indicators to understand economic growth rate variability and secular stagnation | NATURE paper

Global economic stability could be difficult to recover in the wake of the Covid-19, this Nature article finds. Even before the Covid-19 crisis, many of the world’s leading economies were experiencing larger slower growth cycles (recession cycles), suggesting precisely such a period of critical slowing down in the economic system. This analysis suggests that the added weight of the Covid-19 crisis may result in one of the weakest and most unstable recoveries in recorded history for many economies.

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Biodiversity in a post-growth environment | Evidence submission to the EAC Possible Future Inquiry

In early Spring this year, written submissions were invited to aid the Committee in prioritising its future programme of work. CUSP director Tim Jackson submitted evidence, making the case for necessary innovations in governance and a realistic and responsible approach to the management of the economy: Sustainable Development Goals and the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity cannot be achieved without transformative change, the conditions for which have to be put in place now.

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Let’s be less productive—Restoring the value of care | Opinion piece for The New York Times

The challenges facing the world and the UK today are unprecedented. A global health emergency, a global climate crisis, and a catastrophic loss of biodiversity are undermining the basis for future prosperity in the UK and across the world. This article, written for The New York Times in 2012, speaks to the theme of restoring the value of decent work to its rightful place at the heart of society.

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A tale of two utopias: Work in a post-growth world | Paper

In this paper, we aim to contribute to the literature on post-growth futures. Modern imaginings of the future are constrained by the assumptions of growth-based capitalism. To escape these assumptions we turn to utopian fiction.

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Wellbeing Matters—Tackling growth dependency | Policy Briefing for APPG on Limits to Growth

This policy briefing highlights some alternatives to the conventional approach to measuring social progress. It presents a three-fold strategy for moving beyond GDP by: changing the way we measure success; building a consistent policy framework for a ‘wellbeing economy’; and addressing the ‘growth dependency’ of the economy.

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Energy and Productivity—A Review of the Literature | Paper

The UK is experiencing a period of low productivity growth. Although exacerbated by the financial crisis of 2008, the underlying trend is longer and more persistent. This report aims to expand conventional understandings of productivity by exploring the literatures which relate productivity to the availability, production and use of energy in the economy.

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Wellbeing and Productivity: A Review of the Literature | Paper

This report reviews the relationships between the different aspects of wellbeing, productivity, and productivity growth. It is the culmination of a desk-based evidence review, survey, and a mapping workshop held with experts from backgrounds including psychology, sociology, economics, and design. The focus is on wellbeing and labour productivity.

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Unravelling the claims for (and against) green growth | Science Article by Tim Jackson and Peter Victor

It is clear that the larger the economy becomes, the more difficult it is to decouple that growth from its material impacts... This isn't to suggest that decoupling itself is either unnecessary or impossible. On the contrary, decoupling well-being from material throughput is vital if societies are to deliver a more sustainable prosperity—for people and for the planet. (This article is posted on the Science website).

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The False Economy of Big Food. And the case for a new food economy | Report

WHO non-communicable diseases Global Monitoring Framework: Pandemic resilience in sub-Saharan Africa and Low-income Countries | Journal Paper

Health resilience and the global pandemic: the effect of social conditions on the COVID-19 mortality rate | Journal paper

Confronting the dilemma of growth. A response to Warlenius.

Growth dependency in the welfare state | Journal Paper

Living well today and tomorrow: young people, good life narratives, and sustainability | Working Paper

Audiobook | Post Growth—Life After Capitalism, narrated by Tim Jackson

Whose ‘flow’ is it anyway? The demographic correlates of ‘flow proneness’

Post Growth and the North-South Divide: a post-Keynesian stock-flow consistent analysis | Working Paper

Towards a Model of Baumol’s Cost Disease in a Postgrowth Economy—developments of the FALSTAFF stock-flow consistent (SFC) model

Degrowth can work—here’s how science can help | Nature Article

Sunak’s growth fetish is a problem: he’s heading for the same budget trap as Truss | The Guardian Opinion piece

What happens when investment firms take over UK care homes | Report and Briefing Paper

The Problematic Role of Materialistic Values in the Pursuit of Sustainable Well-Being | Journal paper

A critique of the marketisation of long-term residential and nursing home care | Journal Paper

Land is the new frontier to greenwash corporate sins | Letter to the Financial Times

Self-transcendent experiences and sustainable prosperity | Journal Paper

Beyond the Debt Controversy—Re-framing fiscal and monetary policy for a post-pandemic era | Working Paper and Policy Briefing

Finding flow: exploring the potential for sustainable fulfilment | Journal Paper by Amy Isham and Tim Jackson

Zero Carbon Sooner — Revised case for an early zero carbon target for the UK | Paper

Book launch: Wie wollen wir leben?—Tim Jackson in conversation with Barbara Unmüßig

Materialistic values, flow experiences and the role of self-regulatory resources | Journal Paper

Tackling growth dependency—the case of adult social care | Report and Briefing

Confronting inequality in the “new normal”: Hyper‐capitalism, proto‐socialism, and post‐pandemic recovery | Journal Paper

Welfare systems without economic growth | Review paper

Careless Finance—Operational and economic fragility in adult social care | CUSP Working Paper

Energy transition risk: The impact of declining energy return on investment (EROI) | Journal Paper

Worker wellbeing and productivity in advanced economies: Re-examining the link | Journal paper

Modelling Transition Risk—Towards an Agent-Based, Stock-Flow Consistent Framework

Ensuring a Post-COVID Economic Agenda Tackles Global Biodiversity Loss | Journal Paper

The Transition to a Sustainable Prosperity | Journal Paper by Tim Jackson and Peter Victor

Materialism and the Experience of Flow | Journal paper by Amy Isham, Birgitta Gatersleben and Tim Jackson

Using critical slowing down indicators to understand economic growth rate variability and secular stagnation | NATURE paper

Biodiversity in a post-growth environment | Evidence submission to the EAC Possible Future Inquiry

Let’s be less productive—Restoring the value of care | Opinion piece for The New York Times

A tale of two utopias: Work in a post-growth world | Paper

Wellbeing Matters—Tackling growth dependency | Policy Briefing for APPG on Limits to Growth

Energy and Productivity—A Review of the Literature | Paper

Wellbeing and Productivity: A Review of the Literature | Paper

Unravelling the claims for (and against) green growth | Science Article by Tim Jackson and Peter Victor