1 Economic Growth versus Material Use –Is There an Actual Decoupling? Re-estimating the Global Material Intensity for 1900-2009 P. I. Kalimeris 1 , K. Bithas 1, 2 1 Institute of Urban Environment & Human Resources, Department of Economic and Regional Development, Panteion University, 14 Aristotelous str, 17671, Kallithea, Athens, Greece 2 Center for Systems Integration & Sustainability, Michigan State University Manly Miles Building, 1405 South Harrison Road, East Lansing, MI 48823- 5243, USA Abstract. The critical issue of the natural resources scarcity has long attracted the interest of economic science. In this context, the relevant literature on dematerialization asserts that a decoupling of economic growth from material resources use has been occurred for most of the second half of the 20 th century. Evidently, post-industrial societies seem to be in a transition towards a service- economy structure. Moreover, it seems that technological progress and substitutions among different material types allowed for the more efficient exploitation of natural resources. Consequently, the observed shift of developed countries to an emerging service-economy, in tandem with technological advance and material substitutions, may feed optimism on further dematerialization of the economic process and, hence, a potential mitigation of the natural resources scarcity. Modern literature on decoupling and dematerialization utilizes the Material Flow Analysis (MFA) and the derived indicators in order to estimate the material intensity (MI) of the economic process. Within the MFA methodology, material intensity is mainly estimated on the basis of the Material flows/GDP indicators. Main assumption of the present study is that the satisfaction of human needs and preferences requires “real world” goods that inevitably have certain physical dimensions. If we accept the verity that the production of economic goods incorporates certain physical dimensions and, hence, the actual material base required for this production, may convey the empirical results into different estimations and prospects of the future decoupling potentials. In present article, we argue that the Material flows/GDP indicators, prevailing in the relevant literature on decoupling effect, fail to reflect the physical dimensionality as being though a decisive attribute of economic production. In that sense, we propose the use of the Material flows/GDP per Capita indicator as a better, to some extend, approximation of the physical dimensionality that the economic production incorporates. We re-estimate the decoupling effect between total material supply and economic growth at the global aggregate and disaggregated level for 1900-2009. Our results are less promising for decoupling growth from material supply compared to the standard estimations that prevail in the relevant literature.