A wellbeing economy refers to an economic system that is very deliberately designed and delivered to take care of people and planet.
In practical terms it requires a fundamental realignment of the way different enterprises operate, the way governments think about progress, rethinking the nature of jobs, the current tax system, what activities governments subsidise and how the government regulates.
Leading global expert, writer-at-large at the University of Edinburgh and Economic Change Lead at The Next Economy Dr Katherine Trebeck has studied economies across the globe and is an advocate for economic system change in Australia.
Dr Katherine Trebeck will be the keynote speaker at the upcoming Wheelton Family Lecture for Inspiring Social Change.
Dr Trebeck said the current economy was disproportionately benefiting those at the top.
“There’s a huge imbalance in who the economy is working for,” she said.
“We see families here in a rich country like Australia, rich in GDP (gross domestic product) terms, who are struggling to put food on the table.
“We have rising levels of rough sleeping, rising levels of loneliness, anxiety and stress, parents sacrificing meals in order to feed their children and people taking on multiple jobs just to pay the bills.”
The present economic system is not only impacting humans but significantly harming the natural environment.
“The current way we produce, consume and approach resources are pushing the precious natural world beyond what it can handle,” Dr Trebeck said.
“The environmental crisis is a reflection of inequality but also drives more and more inequality and the risk is that as environmental crises gets worse, people's ability and readiness to adapt also worsens.
“Due to a series of decisions over many decades, wealth has been channelled upwards. The environment and people have become treated as inputs to the economy, rather than viewing them as the ultimate goal.”
Instead of focusing solely on economic growth as the end goal or relying on it as the sole means to deliver other goals, a wellbeing economy prioritises meeting the needs of people and communities, with environment and sustainability. That might mean more of some sorts of economic activity, if it’s good for people and planet, but it will also mean less of that which is harmful – it’s about the purpose and impact.
The city of Preston in Northern England is a living example of the opportunities of community wealth building and how a wellbeing economy works in practice.
Instead of waiting for the economic wealth to trickle down, Preston has been building the economy from the community up. This model ensures that economic development is shared more equally among its residents.
Dr Trebeck said in the last 15 years the town had become more resilient, mental health problems had decreased and people’s self-reported happiness had improved.
“There are examples where you can show this happening but until we start to join up all those good examples, we've just got little islands of progress that are vulnerable to the bigger flows of business as usual,” she said.
A wellbeing economy is characterised by four key areas: purpose, prevention, pre-distribution and people-powered.
Purpose is essentially thinking about what the aim of the economy is. Whereas the current economy views success as faster growth of the GDP, as Dr Trebeck points out, this is no longer working for a growing proportion of the population.
The government is spending huge amounts of funding on downstream responses right across the spectrum in housing, health and employment, but it should be looking at the root causes of these societal challenges, doing the upstream analysis and acting there.
A wellbeing economy sees a role for government through taxes and transfers, like welfare payments, to reduce the gap between rich and poor, but pre-distribution asks the market economy to contribute more, through initiatives like worker and community-owned cooperatives and community wealth building, as seen in Preston.
People-powered is about creating an environment where people feel that they’re engaged in the economy. This could be in the form of participatory budgeting, citizens' assemblies and economic democracy.
Dr Trebeck said economic change was inevitable. “Enormous change is happening, there's huge environmental breakdown,” she said.
“Societies are getting more and more unequal; they're pulling apart from each other and people are frustrated.
“So, it’s not a choice between change or no change. It's a choice between how we get on the front foot and bring to the fore a different sort of economy that people need or face a rather dystopian future.”
Dr Trebeck said community foundations played a key role in establishing a wellbeing economy, partly through funding pioneering activities that are going against the grain but also through understanding the challenges of their localities.
“They can take the lessons of what their community partners are seeing on the ground, which is basically the experience of people at the sharp end of the current system, and work with those partners to translate that into policy messages,” she said.
Through its new strategic direction, Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation is starting to connect organisations across the philanthropic and not-for-profit sectors to build a network for communities to join.
The Foundation’s chief executive officer Peter Walton agrees with Dr Trebeck that community foundations have a unique opportunity to create the groundswell of support needed for a wellbeing economy at a local level.
“Community foundations can help to hold a mirror up to the current economy. We can support greater community self-determination and partner with community organisations to initiate and enable an economy that supports rather than neglects people and planet.”
Article written by Mackenzie Archer.
Join in the conversation
Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation is hosting the inaugural Wheelton Family Lecture for Inspiring Social Change with Dr Katherine Trebeck as the keynote speaker.
‘Beyond Tweaks: Confronting the Economic Elephants in the Room’ will challenge current economic models and demonstrate how the adoption of a wellbeing economy model will benefit people and the planet for the long term.
Thursday 29 May at 6:30 PM, The Edge, Fed Square.
The event is currently at capacity, however, please register to join the waitlist. As seats become available, we’ll let you know.
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