Daly was born in Houston, Texas in 1938. Before joining the World Bank, Daly was a research associate at Yale University, and Alumni Professor of Economics at
Louisiana State University. Daly was Senior Economist in the Environment Department of the
World Bank, where he helped to develop policy guidelines related to
sustainable development. While there, he was engaged in environmental operations work in Latin America. He is closely associated with theories of a
steady-state economy. He was a co-founder and associate editor of the journal,
Ecological Economics. In 1971, Daly was inspired by his professor, Nicholas Georgescu-Reogen, and promoted the Entropy Law and the Economic Process, which conceptualizes the economic process as consumption. In 1989, Daly and
John B. Cobb developed the
Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW), which they proposed as a more valid measure of socio-economic progress than
gross domestic product. Daly is a recipient of an Honorary
Right Livelihood Award, the
Heineken Prize for Environmental Science from the
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, the 1992
University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order, the
Sophie Prize (Norway), the
Leontief Prize from the
Global Development and Environment Institute, and was chosen as Man of the Year 2008 by
Adbusters magazine. He is widely credited with having originated the idea of
uneconomic growth, though some credit this to
Marilyn Waring who developed it more completely in her study of the
UN System of National Accounts. In 2014, Daly was the recipient of the
Blue Planet Prize of the Asahi Glass Foundation. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage on October 28, 2022, at the age of 84. •
Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen on
The Entropy Law and the Economic Process •
Preston Cloud on mineral resources •
Paul R. Ehrlich and
John Holdren on population •
Leon R. Kass on bioethics •
Kenneth E. Boulding on the "Economics of the Coming
Spaceship Earth" •
Garrett Hardin's 1968 article, "
The Tragedy of the Commons" • Daly on the steady-state economy •
Warren A. Johnson on the guaranteed income as an environmental measure •
Richard England and
Barry Bluestone on ecology and social conflict •
William Ophuls on political economy ("Leviathan or oblivion?") •
E. F. Schumacher on
Small Is Beautiful (title of his book, also published in 1973) •
Walter A. Weisskopf on economic growth versus existential balance • Daly's essay, "Electric power, employment, and economic growth: a case study in growthmania" •
Jørgen Randers and
Donella Meadows on the carrying capacity of the environment •
John B. Cobb on "ecology, ethics, and theology" •
C.S. Lewis on
The Abolition of Man (an extract from his 1943 book of the same name)
Death Daly died on October 28, 2022, at the age of 84. ==Selected publications==