Prosperity is the flourishing, thriving, good fortune and successful

social status Social status is the relative level of social value a person is considered to possess. Such social value includes respect, honour, honor, assumed competence, and deference. On one hand, social scientists view status as a "reward" for group members ...

. Prosperity often produces profuse

wealth Wealth is the abundance of valuable financial assets or physical possessions which can be converted into a form that can be used for transactions. This includes the core meaning as held in the originating Old English word , which is from an ...

including other factors which can be profusely wealthy in all degrees, such as

happiness Happiness is a complex and multifaceted emotion that encompasses a range of positive feelings, from contentment to intense joy. It is often associated with positive life experiences, such as achieving goals, spending time with loved ones, ...

and

health Health has a variety of definitions, which have been used for different purposes over time. In general, it refers to physical and emotional well-being, especially that associated with normal functioning of the human body, absent of disease, p ...

Competing notions of prosperity

Economic notions of prosperity often compete or interact negatively with health, happiness, or spiritual notions of prosperity. For example, longer hours of work might result in an increase in certain measures of economic prosperity, but at the expense of driving people away from their preferences for shorter work hours. In

Buddhism Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...

, prosperity is viewed with an emphasis on collectivism and

spirituality The meaning of ''spirituality'' has developed and expanded over time, and various meanings can be found alongside each other. Traditionally, spirituality referred to a religious process of re-formation which "aims to recover the original shape o ...

. This perspective can be at odds with capitalistic notions of prosperity, due to the latter's association with greed. Data from social surveys show that an increase in

income Income is the consumption and saving opportunity gained by an entity within a specified timeframe, which is generally expressed in monetary terms. Income is difficult to define conceptually and the definition may be different across fields. F ...

does not result in a lasting increase in happiness; one proposed explanation to this is due to

hedonic adaptation The hedonic treadmill, also known as hedonic adaptation, is the observed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness (or sadness) despite major positive or negative events or life changes. According to this the ...

and social comparison, and a failure to anticipate these factors, resulting in people not allocating enough energy to non-financial goals such as family life and health. The World Bank's "Voices of the Poor", based on research with over 20,000 poor people in 23 countries, identifies a range of factors which poor people identify as part of poverty. These include abuse by those in power, disempowering institutions, excluded locations, gender relationships, lack of security, limited capabilities, physical limitations, precarious livelihoods, problems in social relationships, weak community organizations and discrimination.

Debate under economic growth

Economic growth In economics, economic growth is an increase in the quantity and quality of the economic goods and Service (economics), services that a society Production (economics), produces. It can be measured as the increase in the inflation-adjusted Outp ...

is often seen as essential for economic prosperity, and indeed is one of the factors that is used as a measure of prosperity. The Rocky Mountain Institute, among others, has put forth an alternative point of view, that prosperity does not require growth, claiming instead that many of the problems facing communities are actually a result of growth, and that

sustainable development Sustainable development is an approach to growth and Human development (economics), human development that aims to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.United Nations General ...

requires abandoning the idea that growth is required for prosperity. The debate over whether economic growth is necessary for, or at odds with, human prosperity, has been active at least since the publication of

Our Common Future __NOTOC__ ''Our Common Future'', also known as the Brundtland Report, was published in October 1987 by the United Nations through the Oxford University Press. This publication was in recognition of Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Norwegian Prime Mi ...

in 1987, and has been pointed to as reflecting two opposing worldviews. In 1996, the British ecological economist Tim Jackson outlined the conflicting relationship between human wellbeing and economic growth in his book ''

Material Concerns ''Material Concerns'' is a book by author and economist Tim Jackson (economist), Tim Jackson. Published in 1996, it pioneered the concept of ''preventive environmental management'', a core principle of the circular economy framework. Descriptio ...

''. ''Prosperity without Growth'' then, first published as a report to the UK Sustainable Development Commission in 2008, comprehensively expanded on the arguments and policy recommendations. Internationally organised, the Degrowth movement is taking a similar position and argue that

overconsumption Overconsumption describes a situation where consumers overuse their available goods and services to where they can't, or don't want to, replenish or reuse them. In microeconomics, this is the point where the marginal cost of a consumer is greater ...

lies at the root of long-term

environmental issue Environmental issues are disruptions in the usual function of ecosystems. Further, these issues can be caused by humans (human impact on the environment) or they can be natural. These issues are considered serious when the ecosystem cannot recov ...

s and social inequalities, advocating for the down-scaling of production and consumption. In the 2021 Review on the Economics of Biodiversity commissioned by the UK Treasury, Partha Dasgupta argues prosperity has come at a "devastating" cost to biodiversity, and that sustainable economic growth will require abandoning GDP as a measure for economic progress.

Synergistic notions of prosperity

Many distinct notions of prosperity, such as economic prosperity, health, and happiness, are

correlated In statistics, correlation or dependence is any statistical relationship, whether causal or not, between two random variables or bivariate data. Although in the broadest sense, "correlation" may indicate any type of association, in statistic ...

or even have

causal Causality is an influence by which one Event (philosophy), event, process, state, or Object (philosophy), object (''a'' ''cause'') contributes to the production of another event, process, state, or object (an ''effect'') where the cause is at l ...

effects on each other. Economic prosperity and health are well-established to have a positive correlation, but the extent to which health has a causal effect on economic prosperity is unclear. There is evidence that happiness is a cause of good health, both directly through influencing behavior and the

immune system The immune system is a network of biological systems that protects an organism from diseases. It detects and responds to a wide variety of pathogens, from viruses to bacteria, as well as Tumor immunology, cancer cells, Parasitic worm, parasitic ...

, and indirectly through social relationships, work, and other factors. One study which advances a holistic definition of prosperity is the Legatum Prosperity Index (an annual report by the Legatum Institute, a UK-based independent educational charity founded by Legatum), which uses data from 56 separate sources, including the World Health Organization, Global slavery Index and World Bank, to rank 169 nations in an index which goes beyond GDP as a measurement of national prosperity.

Ecological perspectives

ecology Ecology () is the natural science of the relationships among living organisms and their Natural environment, environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community (ecology), community, ecosystem, and biosphere lev ...

, prosperity can refer to the extent to which a species flourishes under certain circumstances.

References

External links