Post materialism is an economic philosophy focussing on quality of life and enviornmental sustainability over income and material possessions. Postmaterialists give values such as more say in government decisions, the ideal of a society based on ideas rather than money, and a clean and healthy environment a higher priority than economic growth, a strong national defense, and 'law and order'.

The term postmaterialism was coined by the political scientist Ronald Inglehart in 1970. One of his main hypotheses was that people place their highest interest in things they were relatively deprived of in their youth. Therefore, Inglehart argued that people growing up after the Second World War would generally have a more post-materialist value orientation than people growing up before, because they were not raised in times of material deprivation. Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km into the air. ...

This hypothesis would implicate that the whole of society is expected to grow more postmaterialist over time. This, however, turned out not to be the case. In countries with a relatively high level of postmaterialism such as The Netherlands or Sweden, the degree of postmaterialists in society never grew higher than 30 percent, and during some years even declined. Still, the concept of postmaterialism can be usefully related to libertarianism, (anti-)authoritarism, egalitarianism and party preference. The term libertarian is also claimed by libertarian socialism (also called left libertarianism). ... Egalitarianism is the moral doctrine that equality ought to prevail throughout society. ...