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Business & Economics

THE IMPACT OF POPULATION AGING ON CARBON EMISSIONS: PRODUCTION PATH OR CONSUMPTION PATH
Yao Zeng, Dongsheng Zhang

ABSTRACT: Population aging and climate change from carbon emissions are major global concerns that the world is currently facing. This socioenvironmental connection has since become important for both developed and developing societies, all of which want a good ecological environment. To clarify the relationship between population aging and carbon emissions, an extended STIRPAT model was established based on the economic attributes of population as the internal logical starting point and the inter-provincial panel data of China from 2000 to 2019 as the research samples, and the impact of population aging on carbon emissions was empirically tested. Results show that population aging significantly reduces carbon emissions and population aging indirectly affects carbon emissions through the production path and the consumption path. There are also regional differences on the effects of population aging on carbon emissions, with population aging significantly suppressing carbon emissions in the three major regions of China, especially in the country’s western region. In the eastern and central regions, carbon emissions are suppressed through the production path and the consumption path, while only the latter suppresses emissions in the western region. This study provides policy implications for reducing carbon emissions in different ways, especially in China with rapid population aging.

KEYWORDS:  population aging, production path, consumption path, carbon emissions.

JEL classification:  J14, J21, J24, J26, O14