Seminar: "How to reconcile economy, happiness and ecology", by Stefano Bartolini

Professor Stefano Bartolini, from the University of Siena, Italy, will visit ICTA-UAB to give a seminar in the framework of the CLIMGROW project.

 

Seminar: "How to reconcile economy, happiness and ecology" 

Speaker:  Prof. Stefano Bartolini, University of Siena, Italy.

 

• Date: Tuesday, April 8th 2025
• Time: 14.30h (CET)
• Venue: Sala Montseny (Z/022 &Z/023) ICTA-UAB

 

Evidence suggests that sustainability requires reducing economic growth, not just greening it. This conclusion often leads to pessimism, based on two beliefs. The first concerns human tendency to demographic and economic expansion; the second relates to the political unfeasibility of limiting growth, because of lack of consensus. We challenge both beliefs. First, the decline of fertility and per-capita income growth provide reasons to expect non-increasing anthropic pressure on ecosystems over the long run, belying the alleged human tendency to permanent expansion. Second, the lack of a clear alternative to growth as a means to increase well-being is the main reason why policies to limit growth have never gathered wide consensus.  Findings from a large literature on subjective well-being and social capital allows us to propose such an alternative. Specifically, we argue that policies for social capital can decouple well-being from economic growth. Indeed, the crisis of social capital experienced by much of the world's population is a root cause of the current unsustainable growth of the world economy. This happens because people seek economic affluence to compensate for the emotional distress and collective disempowerment caused by poor social capital. We propose policies that, by promoting social capital, would shift the economy towards a more sustainable path characterized by slower economic growth and increasing well-being. Such proposals are politically viable and can reconcile sustainability with well-being.

Stefano Bartolini is associate professor of Economics at the University of Siena and is the author of several articles published in international journals. He has worked with the World Bank and the OECD, and he has organized international conferences, including Policies for Happiness (Siena, June 2007) and Once Upon a Time There was the Future (Florence, January 2015). His research focusses on whether it is possible to reconcile a better quality of our environment, relationships, and well-being with economic prosperity.