Unequal age-based household carbon footprint in China

ABSTRACT

Controlling household consumption is an essential means to achieve carbon neutrality in China, and population ageing has an important impact on its structure. Since older people exhibit different consumption patterns than younger people, an increase in the proportion of aged people affects overall consumption patterns. This paper adopts an input–output model to reflect the heterogeneity in the consumption structure and household carbon footprint of different age groups, followed by a simulation of the future household carbon footprint. The results find that in China, the total household carbon footprint shows an inverted U-shape with age, with the lowest total carbon footprint coming from aged households (age of household head 65 and above) and the highest total carbon footprint from middle-aged households (age of household head 45–54). The average household carbon footprint decreases with age, with aged households remaining the lowest. Aged households, however, have the highest share of the direct carbon footprint. Interestingly, urban households of all ages have a higher carbon footprint than rural households, with the largest difference being among aged households. The projection results show that based on demographic changes, although the average household carbon footprint of elderly households in China is low, as the number of elderly households increases, the total carbon footprint of elderly households will be sizable and need to be taken seriously.

Key policy insights

• The total carbon footprint of elderly households will become more significant and sizable as the number of elderly households increases.

• Urban life is more carbon-intensive, and China’s urbanization is leading to an increase in the carbon footprint.

• Aged households require more attention in future climate policies.

• Targeted, consumption-based climate policies are necessary for carbon reduction in China and will have relevance in other countries with similar consumption structure and demographic trends, e.g. with ageing or rapidly urbanizing populations.

KEYWORDS:

• Demographic change
• household consumption patterns
• carbon footprint
• age-based
• input-output model

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• Q54
• Q58
• Q56
• Q47
• P28

Acknowledgements

Research results and conclusions expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the grant providers. The authors bear sole responsibility for any errors and omissions that may remain.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 http://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2021-03/13/content_5592681.htm

2 http://www.stats.gov.cn/ztjc/zdtjgz/zgrkpc/dqcrkpc/ggl/202105/t20210519_1817693.html

3 The consumption categories of the CHFS dataset used in our paper include food, clothing, housing rent, utilities, fuel and management, home improvement and maintenance, durable goods, daily necessities, household services, local transportation, transportation, communication, education, entertainment, travel, health care, medical care, and other expenditures. Due to data ownership restrictions, tobacco and alcohol, anti-smog products, sewer repair, and legal services are not available and therefore not covered in our paper.

4 https://www.ceads.net/data/, CEADs gathers a group of experts from the UK, USA, and China to work on China and other emerging economies’ emission accounting methods and applications. CEADs provides the Energy and CO2 emission inventories for China and its 30 provinces and cities from 1997 to 2019.

5 https://population.un.org/wpp/

6 In 2015, when the Chinese government introduced the comprehensive two-child policy, the total fertility rate was 1.047, which became 1.580 and 1.300 in 2017 and 2020, respectively, with a short-term increase and then a decline in the population in the two and five years after the policy was implemented. According to Lan (2021) and Wang et al. (2019), we think China will still be at a low fertility level in 2030, despite the introduction of the three-child policy and maternity leave extension and other fertility subsidies by the Chinese government in 2021.

7 In this paper, carbon emissions caused by household consumption activities are divided into direct emissions (coming from direct energy consumption) and indirect emissions (coming from household expenditure on goods and services which use energy and other resources as intermediate inputs) (Heltberg, 2005). For rural households, direct emissions include residential biomass/fossil fuel combustion, and private car emissions; for urban households, direct emissions only include fossil fuel combustion, and private car emissions (Zhao et al., 2019).

8 The list of Chinese industry sectors is provided in Supplementary Material shown in the Table.SM1.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China: [Grant Number 71690243,71974141]; National Social Science Fund of China: [Grant Number 20&ZD109].