We economists have done the maths: ‘growth’ is a doomed strategy – there is a better way | Olivier De Schutter and others

Our roadmap has been shaped by experts across the world, from UN agencies to grassroots movements. We call on political leaders at all levels to use it

We live in an age of manufactured scarcity. In a world richer than ever before, roughly one 10th of the world’s population still lives in extreme destitution. Millions of people cannot afford enough food, proper housing or basic healthcare, while a tiny minority accumulates unprecedented wealth and power. At the same time, droughts, megafires, floods and heatwaves remind us that our economies are pushing the planet beyond its limits.

These are not separate crises. They are symptoms of an economic model that has reached the end of the road. Poverty and inequality are not accidents; they are predictable outcomes of policy choices: how we design tax systems, regulate labour markets, value care, structure public services and decide whose needs and whose voices matter. Crucially, if governments can manufacture poverty, they can also dismantle it.

Olivier De Schutter is the chair of New Economies for Eradicating Poverty; Joseph Stiglitz is a Nobel laureate in economics; Jayati Ghosh is professor of economics at University of Massachusetts Amherst; Thomas Piketty is professor of economics at the Paris School of Economics; Kate Raworth is an economist at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute; Jason Hickel is a political economist and professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona