Kate Raworth
1970–
Raworth drew a ring and changed what the question is. Not “how much does the economy grow?” but “are we above the floor and below the ceiling?”
The Doughnut
The doughnut has two rings. The inner ring is a social foundation: twelve dimensions of minimum human dignity — food, water, energy, housing, health, education, income, political voice, social equity, gender equality, peace, networks. Falling below this floor is deprivation. The outer ring is an ecological ceiling: nine planetary boundaries beyond which Earth-system stability is threatened — climate, biodiversity, ocean chemistry, nitrogen cycles, land conversion, freshwater use. Exceeding this ceiling is degradation.
The safe and just space is the ring between them. The doughnut.
The measure of economic success is position, not velocity. An economy that grows its way across the ecological ceiling while lifting people above the social floor has not succeeded. An economy that stays within the ceiling while leaving millions below the floor has also not succeeded. The goal is the full ring: socially sufficient and ecologically stable at the same time, a condition the history of economic growth has consistently not produced.
Seven Ways
Doughnut Economics (2017) is organized around replacing the bad metaphors that economics inherited from the 19th century. The economy isn’t a machine to be tuned — it’s an embedded system, dependent on society and the living world, not separate from them. GDP growth isn’t success — it’s a means to ends that can be stated more honestly. Homo economicus isn’t who we actually are — people are social, reciprocal, context-sensitive, and capable of care.
The seven reframes: change the goal, see the big picture, nurture human nature beyond rational self-interest, get savvy with systems, design to distribute (not grow and then distribute), create to regenerate (not grow and then clean up), and be agnostic about growth. That last one is deliberately unsatisfying — Raworth declines to say growth is necessarily bad, just that it’s not necessarily the answer, and that targeting it as the primary indicator guarantees you hit it even while missing everything that matters.
Key Works
- “A Safe and Just Space for Humanity” (Oxfam Discussion Paper, 2012) — the original framework
- Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist (2017)
- Amsterdam City Doughnut (with DEAL, 2020) — the first city-scale application
Connections
- Elinor Ostrom — Ostrom’s commons governance answers how to distribute within shared limits
- E.F. Schumacher — both name the limits of growth; Raworth adds the social floor
- seventh-generation — Raworth’s ecological ceiling extended across time
- reciprocity-with-land — stewardship as operating within the ceiling
- commons — distributing within planetary limits requires commons-scale governance
- appropriate-technology — technology that operates within ecological means
The doughnut is not a diet. It’s a description of where we need to be — and how far from it most growth strategies actually land.