Characteristics, temporal trends, and driving factors of household carbon inequality in India

Abstract

The distribution of carbon space across households needs attention towards unraveling its temporal dynamics and drivers for designing just and equitable mitigation policies. This study focuses on the Indian economy from 2003–04 to 2015–16 as it aims to understand the characteristics, temporal trends, and driving factors of inequality in household carbon footprints for rural and urban areas. Utilizing Environmentally extended Input-Output (EE-IO) data along with national household survey-based micro-economic details of the Indian economy, we estimate the direct and indirect CO2 emissions associated with the consumption of regional expenditure deciles for both years. We first quantify the inequality in the distribution of these emissions across household deciles using the Gini coefficient, Theil index, and carbon Palma ratio to analyze their patterns and temporal trends. Secondly, we investigate the drivers of household carbon inequality and its variation over time using decomposition by regional population sub-groups, consumption category sources, and expenditures as a determinant.For 2015–16, the urban richest decile emits 13.3 times more than the poorest one, while this disparity is around 7.5 times only for the rural regions of the Indian economy. Our results indicate that inequality of carbon space sharing among Indian households increased over the 12 years, more conspicuously in the case of rural households than for urban counterparts. The rural carbon Gini increased from 0.308 to 0.324, while the urban one showed a negligible change from 0.398 to 0.400. The dominant role of household consumption basket changes over time, particularly towards transportation needs, is observed in contributing to increments in both regions' carbon inequality. On the other hand, the expenditure inequality shows a more prominent increase over time in the case of urban areas, with its expenditure Gini rising by 0.23 points compared to 0.19 points increment for the rural case. The reasons underlying the striking regional trends in carbon and expenditure Gini indices are explored. Implications of our results are relevant in informing climate justice and mitigation concerns.