Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist

by Kate Raworth

The Twenty-First-Century Challenge The word ‘economics’ was coined by the philosopher Xenophon in Ancient Greece. Combining oikos meaning household with nomos meaning rules or norms, he invented the art of household management, and it could not be more relevant today. This century we need some pretty insightful managers to guide our planetary household, and ones who are ready to pay attention to the needs of all of its inhabitants. There have been extraordinary strides in human well-being over the past 60 years. The average child born on planet Earth in 1950 could expect to live just 48 years; today such a child can look forwards to 71 years of life.6 Since 1990 alone, the number of people living in extreme income poverty—on less than $1.90 a day—has fallen by more than half. Over two billion people have gained access to safe drinking water and toilets for the first time. All this while the human population has grown by almost 40 percent.7 That was the good news. The rest of the story, of course, has not turned out so well so far. Many millions of people still lead lives of extreme deprivation. Worldwide, one person in nine does not have enough to eat.8 In 2015, six million children under the age of five died, more than half of those deaths due to easy-to-treat conditions such as diarrhoea and malaria.9 Two billion people live on less than $3 a day, and over 70 million young women and men are unable to find work.10 Deprivations such as these have been exacerbated by growin...