Leogrande, A., Magazzino, C., Costantiello, A., Drago, C., Arnone, M., and Laureti, L. (2026). Explaining the Decline of Natural Wealth per Capita: A Three-Pillar ESG Analysis of the World Bank Wealth Accounts. Preprints.org.
The paper analyzes annual data for about 150 countries from 1995 to 2020, drawn from the World Bank’s Sovereign ESG Data Portal and The Changing Wealth of Nations accounts. It argues that the fall in renewable natural capital per person is mainly a product of population growth, since the total stock is roughly flat, and that changes in institutional quality matter more than its level. It has not been peer-reviewed. The wiki cites it in What GDP Leaves Out as counterevidence to reading the per-person decline as drawdown, tagged [TBV].