Sustainability of Urbanization, Non-Agricultural Output and Air Pollution in the World’s Top 20 Polluting Countries

Abstract

Rapid urbanization is being increasingly recognized as a significant factor of environmental pollution across the world. However, the significance of sustainable urbanization in controlling both pollution and population remains either limited in scope, in the case of developed countries, or less researched, in the case of developing nations. To fill this gap, the present study employed both theoretical and empirical tools to investigate the significant link between sustainable urbanization, pollution and non-agricultural output. In order to empirically examine the supposed link among the key variables mentioned above, the present study considered a panel of the world’s top 20 polluting countries for the 1991–2018 period, which significantly includes both developed and developing nations. Panel vector error correction model and panel co-integration techniques were employed to derive the possible correlation between the variables through sustainable urbanization. Empirical findings show an absence of equilibrium relations among the three variables in the panel of developed countries. However, the study clearly finds that all the three indicators maintain long-run associations for the panel of developing countries. Furthermore, in the short run, the results determine unambiguously that there are significant causal interplays between any two sets of variables and the remaining one variable for both the panel data of developed and developing countries. On the other hand, short-run interplays among the variables we considered exist for both developed and developing economies. From the perspective of policy formulation, the present study shows that policy makers from both the developed and developing nations should be cautious before encouraging urbanization, at least in the short term. However, the combined effects in the short and long term suggest policy makers should be more careful before encouraging urbanization in developing economies.

Multiscale Impact of Environmental and Socio-Economic Factors on Low Physical Fitness among Chinese Adolescents and Regionalized Coping Strategies

“…For example, there may be cultural differences between studies, differences in the definition of urban and rural cultural environments, and differences in the assessment of physical fitness in each country. What is certain, however, is that rapid urbanization has some side effects, such as a reduction in environmental quality and air pollution [ 112 ]. At present, China is in the process of changing from high-speed urbanization to high-quality urbanization.…”

Institutional Pension Insurance in Sustainable Development of Urban–Rural Intergenerational Support

“…This allows them to improve their quality of life and reduce their time spent on childcare. On the other hand, the improved development of the market for domestic services in cities and the greater substitutability of temporal and economic support create the conditions for parents to substitute time for economic support when providing intergenerational support, whereas more nonagricultural employment opportunities for urban parents increase their opportunity costs of providing time support [52].…”

Nexus between Housing Price and Magnitude of Pollution: Evidence from the Panel of Some High- and-Low Polluting Cities of the World

“…Moreover, Bayer et al [36], Chen and Ye [34], Zhao and Sing [37], and Zheng et al [38] further extended this idea to the neighboring cities. If we go along with the traditional Environment-Urbanization-Growth literature, we find that a higher gross domestic product (GDP) influences the flow of the economic voyage in terms of starting the process of urbanization, which in turn increases the share of carbon emissions within the proportion of the total emissions of pollutants owing to high-level capital formation [39][40][41][42]. Interestingly, the expansion of the housing industry also tells a similar set of stories in place of the enhancement of urbanization [29,34].…”