Exploring the impacts of societal transformations on the decent living income in Switzerland

Switzerland has committed to net-zero emissions by 2050, and the SWICE project's WP2 outlines sufficiency-oriented societal transformations in housing, mobility, lifestyles, and energy, meant to secure wellbeing for all under that transition. While these transformations have been described qualitatively, the income required to live decently under them has remained unexplored. This report addresses that gap through three questions: what counts as a decent living income under present conditions in Switzerland; how expenditure might evolve by 2050 under a business-as-usual (BAU) trajectory; and what income would meet human needs under a Decent Living Standards (DLS) scenario in 2050. The first is answered through a literature review, using the poverty line and social welfare's vital social minimum as references. The other two are addressed through a bottom-up model translating physical consumption parameters, across housing, mobility, nutrition, health, communications, and clothing, into monthly costs for the current state, 2050 BAU and 2050 DLS. The model estimates 3228 CHF/cap/month today, rising to 3553 under BAU, and falling to 995 under DLS. This drop is driven mainly by lower physical consumption rather than how it is provisioned: sufficiency, not efficiency, is the main lever. A sensitivity analysis shows the result is robust in order of magnitude, though sensitive to some normative assumptions. These findings give an exploratory sense of how such transformations could reshape decent living income in Switzerland, while underscoring that determining it in practice remains a matter of public policy.