GoKawiilTwo reports have renewed the debate over whether nations should stop prioritizing economic growth.
In June, the Global Justice Report, published by a research organization called the World Inequality Lab, called for a rebalancing of income and wealth, and for the richest countries to accept lower growth, to solve planet-wide problems such as environmental degradation and climate change1.
In May, a United Nations group of economists, the High-Level Expert Group on Beyond GDP, published a set of recommendations for moving beyond gross domestic product (GDP)2. The report called on nations to manage their economies around a dashboard of indicators of sustainable well-being, and not just GDP.
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Yet, this focus on growth risks asking the wrong question. The central issue is not simply whether economies should become richer faster or slower, or how general well-being can be measured, but whether governments are leaving behind more or less wealth for future generations.
Sustainability is fundamentally a matter of justice3: what one generation owes to the next. The debate around how this can be achieved has given rise to tensions (see Nature 655, 547; 2026). The Global Justice Report largely frames justice in the context of space: between countries and between wealthy people and those living in poverty. Approaches to managing sustainability within planetary boundaries — to avoid breaching global limits of natural resources and systems — seek justice across periods of time, between present and future generations.
Here, I clarify what justice between generations means, how it applies to economics and how inclusive national accounts for produced, human and natural capital offer a way forwards.
To understand concepts of wealth and justice, it’s worth looking back at the history of economics, as I did when researching for my book, The Inclusive Wealth of Nations (2026). It was timed to coincide with the 250th anniversary of one of the most influential books in economics: Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776).
In that work, Smith defined a nation’s wealth not in terms of money but as capital — machines, buildings, land and the “acquired and useful abilities of all inhabitants and members of the society”. Economists still follow this approach.
Smith also outlined how enabling justice is an essential role of the state. But it was in his earlier book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), that Smith set out his views on justice more fully. One aspect that has been underappreciated is how an individual’s actions affect others.
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