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A subsistence economy is an economy in which a group attempts to produce no more output per period than they must consume in that period in order to survive, but do not attempt to accumulate wealth or to transfer productivity from one period to the next. In such a system, a concept of wealth may not exist, and there is a reliance on renewal and reproduction within the natural environment. For this reason subsistence economies are often lauded by anarcho-primitivists who consider investment economies to be too much of a strain on the environment and damaging to social stability.
Before the invention of currency, subsistence economies were the dominant economic system throughout the world. The system still survives as the primary traditional practice in several societies, including the Melanesian people of Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. It was also the primary practice in French Polynesia until French military personnel were stationed there in 1962, after which time there was a shift to a tourism-based system.
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