Income growth and atmospheric pollution in Spain: An input–output approach

Abstract

Abstract:The relationships between economic growth and environmental pressures are complex. Since the early nineties, the debate on these relationships has been strongly influenced by the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis, which states that during the first stage of economic development environmental pressures increase as per capita income increases, but once a critical turningpoint has been reached these pressures diminish as income levels continue to increase. However, to date such a delinking between economic growth and emission levels has not happened for most atmospheric pollutants in Spain. The aim of this paper is to analyse the relationship between income growth and nine atmospheric pollutants in Spain. In order to obtain empirical outcomes for this analysis, we adopt an input-output approach and use NAMEA data for the nine pollutants. First, we undertake a structural decomposition analysis for the period 1995-2000 to estimate the contribution of various factors to changes in the levels of atmospheric emissions. And second, we estimate the emissions associated with the consumption patterns of different groups of households classified according to their level of expenditure.Key words: input-output analysis, atmospheric pollution, income growth, environmental Kuznets Curve, Spain JEL classification: C67, Q51Resumen: Las relaciones entre crecimiento económico y presiones atmosféricas son complejas. Desde principios de los años noventa, el debate sobre estas relaciones ha estado muy influenciado por la hipótesis de la Curva de Kuznets Ambiental, según la cual durante la primera etapa del desarrollo económico las presiones ambientales crecen a medida que incrementa la renta per cápita pero, una vez se alcanza un cierto nivel de renta, estas presiones disminuyen conforme la renta per cápita continua aumentando. Sin embargo, para la gran mayoría de contaminantes atmosféricos esta desvinculación entre crecimiento económico y nivel de emisión no se ha producido hasta la fecha en España. El objetivo de este artículo es profundizar en las relaciones existentes entre el crecimiento de renta y las emisiones de nueve contaminantes atmosféricos en España. Para ello, se adopta un enfoque input-output y se utilizan los datos del NAMEA para estos nueve contaminantes. En primer lugar, se estima la contribución de diferentes factores sobre los cambios en los niveles de emisiones atmosféricas mediante un análisis de descomposición estructural para el periodo 1995-2000. En segundo lugar, haciendo uso también de datos de la Encuesta Continua de Presupuestos Familiares, se estiman las emisiones asociadas a los patrones de consumo de los diferentes hogares españoles clasificados según su nivel de gasto.

Atmospheric Pollution and Consumption Patterns in Spain: An Input-Output Approach

“…Obviously, it could be other factors that have not been considered in this paper -such as technological changes -, which may explain an absolute delinking for some gases along the time. Even though it is not the aim of this paper, we can stand that in the case of Spain there is not any evidence of this trend for the majority of gases (Roca et al, 2001;Roca and Serrano, 2007).…”

“…A possible approach is to apply some type of transformation in order to calculate the "equivalent expenditure". Even though there are other possible methods, the most usual transformation is the "modified OECD scale" 14 (Wier et al, 2001;Roca and Serrano, 2007), In this paper, however, we adopt a different approach: we solve the problem of different household size analysing the expenditure elasticity of emissions not for the whole sample but for the different household groups according their size. Thus, we made independent analysis for one member households, two member households, three member households, four member households, and households with five or more members.…”

Greenhouse Gas Implications of Urban Sprawl in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area

“…This tradition dates back to the 1970s when the first study of direct and indirect energy consumption of U.S. households was done [30]. In addition, more recent examples of such regression can be found from the literature [22][23][24][25]31,32]. However, our analysis is the first such analysis focusing on the within metropolitan area differences, with a special attention to house types.…”

“…This is done by aggregating expenditure data's categories to match the 52 COICOP categories of ENVIMAT and then multiplying expenditures with the corresponding ENVIMAT sector's value of greenhouse gas intensity (CO 2 equivalents per euro). It has been broadly acknowledged that combination of the two allows the assessment of the amount of greenhouse gases that consumption choices cause both directly and indirectly [23][24][25][26].…”

“…The regression analysis is employed to further analyze the calculated footprints and to find out which factors actually affect them. As our starting point, we use the non-linear exponential relationship between environmental impact and households' expenditures [23][24][25][26]:…”