The relationship between air pollution emissions and income: US Data

Abstract

Considerable interest has focused on the possible existence of an environmental Kuznets curve, whereby pollution first increases but later falls with increasing income. Empirical studies have concentrated on a wide spectrum of countries and run into inevitable problems of data comparability and quality. We avoid these problems by looking at seven types of air emissions across the 50 US states and find all seven pollutants decrease with increasing per capita income. We also find strong evidence of heteroscedasticity with respect to the income–emissions relationship: lower-income states display much greater variability in per capita emission levels than higher-income states. Additionally, we look at the best measured of these emissions, air toxics, for the period 1988–94. Using a simple sign test, we find support for the notion that an increase in income is associated with a decrease in per capita emissions. However, the change in emissions appears to be unrelated to the magnitude of the change in income. We do find, though, that the reduction in per capita emissions is increasing both in terms of the 1988 level of per capita emissions and income. Possible implications of these results for the development process are discussed.

Legal Families and Environmental Protection: Is there a Causal Relationship?

“…In particular, we report the results of previous empirical analyses on the EKC, to affirm that CO2 usually shows an inverse-U shaped curve, and that its turning point is included within a range of per capita income values from 10.000$ to 35.400$ (Cole et al, 1997, Holtz-Eakin and Selden, 1995, Roberts and Grimes, 1997, Schmalensee et al, 1998, Unruh and Moomaw, 1998. With regard to air particles emissions, a variety of dynamics were found (quadratic, linear downward and U-inverted quadratic), with a peak around a per capita income between 7.300$ and 9.800$ (Carson et al, 1997, Cole et al, 1997, Panayotou, 1993, Selden and Song, 1994, Shafik and Bandyopadhyay, 1997, Schmalensee et al, 1998. Finally, waste still shows a mixed behaviour over time and with income growth (inverse-U shaped, linear increasing, quadratic), and it was not possible to determine the per capita income level at which the maximum of the EKC curve occurred (Cole et al, 1997, Shafik and Bandyopadhyay, 1997, Shafik, 1994.…”

Exploring the relationship between energy usage segregation and environmental degradation in N-11 countries

“…These scholars analyzed 149 countries during 1960-1990 and could not determine EKC hypothesis. A for a single-country context, the seminal study was conducted by Carson et al (1997). They analyze 50 states in the US during 1988-1994 and discover an inverted U-shaped EKC pattern, with the turnaround point at $62,700 per capita.…”

Effects of Economic Growth on CO2 Emissions in the “Congo Basin” Countries

“…Other studies (Shukia & Parik, 1996;Carson et al, 1997;Halicioglu, 2009;Akpan et al, 2011;etc. ) do not lead to the reversed U shaped relationship.…”