Assessing the Inequality of Spanish Households through the Carbon Footprint: The 21st Century Great Recession Effect

Summary Inequality has recently become a major concern in economics. Leaving aside its social and economic effects is also possible to trace its environmental consequences, which this article attempts to assess. The indicator to be measured is the household's carbon footprint (CF) for different...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Journal of industrial ecology Vol. 20; no. 3; pp. 571 - 581
Main Authors:	López, Luis Antonio, Arce, Guadalupe, Morenate, Manuel, Monsalve, Fabio
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	New Haven Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01-06-2016 Wiley Subscription Services, Inc
Subjects:	Carbon Carbon footprint Consumption consumption patterns Economic theory Environmental impact Households Income inequality industrial ecology Inequality input-output analysis (IOA) International Spain Studies Spain
Online Access:	Get full text
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Summary:	Summary Inequality has recently become a major concern in economics. Leaving aside its social and economic effects is also possible to trace its environmental consequences, which this article attempts to assess. The indicator to be measured is the household's carbon footprint (CF) for different social groups. The deep economic crisis in the Spanish economy between 2008 and 2013 has increased consumption inequality and doubled the number of households below the poverty line. When focusing on domestic consumption, we found that the shopping basket of all income groups has very similar emissions intensities; therefore, the differences among the household CFs depend mainly on the scale effect (i.e., the size of consumption). However, when international trade is also considered, we found that the emission intensity of imports is bigger than the intensity of all the respective domestic goods. Therefore, the share of imported goods and services by social class will be an important determinant of the respective total CF. Before the crisis, households with higher incomes imported 30% of their total consumption items whereas households with lower income imported only 20% of their consumption. During the crisis, the imports of medium‐high‐income households fell to 20%, whereas low‐ and middle‐income families maintained the same import share, which contributed to the reduction of the total household CF.
Bibliography:	istex:CC0378E9C960EFCCED0D00B6AE526796D35A0899 ArticleID:JIEC12466 ark:/67375/WNG-JCHPQ29G-B ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23
ISSN:	1088-1980 1530-9290
DOI:	10.1111/jiec.12466