On the contrary, they argue that it was the emergence of colonialism and the shoehorning of regions into the capitalist world system starting in the "long 16th century" that created "periods of severe social and economic dislocation" which resulted in wages crashing to subsistence levels and surging premature mortality.

They conclude that human welfare only really began to increase in the 20th century, and note that this development coincided with "the rise of anti-colonial and socialist political movements.

"[18][19] Critics of Hickel argue that there is a strong correlation between economic growth and improvements in welfare (as measured by factors such as leisure time, health care, life expectancy).

[20][25][26][27] Hickel states that the vast majority of gains against poverty have been achieved by China and East Asian countries that were not subjected to structural adjustment schemes.

[20] Nevertheless, Sullivan and Hickel argue that poverty persists under contemporary global capitalism (in spite of it being highly productive) because masses of working people are cut off from common land and resources, have no ownership or control over the means of production, and have their labor power "appropriated by a ruling class or an external imperial power," thereby maintaining extreme inequality.

[28] Additionally, Shaohua Chen and Martin Ravallion's research shows that no matter where the poverty threshold is defined, the percentage of the world's residents who live below it declined from 1981 to 2008.

Hickel et al. write that this unequal exchange is a leading driver of uneven development, increasing global inequality and environmental degradation.

[34] Moreover, Hickel argues that poor countries suffer significant losses due to international trade and finance rules (such as under structural adjustment programmes, free trade agreements, and the WTO framework) which depress their potential export revenues and prevent them from using protective tariffs, subsidies, and capital controls as tools for national economic development.

It asserted that a small number of high-income countries are responsible for the overwhelming majority of historical CO2 emissions in excess of the planetary boundary (350 ppm).

[21] In a review paper written with the ecological economist Giorgos Kallis, Hickel argues that narratives about "green growth" have little empirical validity.

They point to evidence showing that it is not feasible for high-income nations to achieve absolute reductions in resource use, or to reduce emissions to zero fast enough stay within the carbon budget for 2 °C if they continue to pursue GDP growth at historical rates.

[41] In a 2022 comment published in Nature, Hickel, Kallis and others say that both the IPCC and the IPBES "suggest that degrowth policies should be considered in the fight against climate breakdown and biodiversity loss, respectively.