Abstract
This study focuses on the impact of population structure changes on carbon emissions in China from 1995 to 2018. This paper constructs the multiple regression model and uses the ridge regression to analyze the relationship between population structure changes and carbon emissions from four aspects: population size, population age structure, population consumption structure, and population employment structure. The results showed that these four variables all had a significant impact on carbon emissions in China. The ridge regression analysis confirmed that the population size, population age structure, and population employment structure promoted the increase in carbon emissions, and their contribution ratios were 3.316%, 2.468%, 1.280%, respectively. However, the influence of population consumption structure (−0.667%) on carbon emissions was negative. The results showed that the population size had the greatest impact on carbon emissions, which was the main driving factor of carbon emissions in China. Chinese population will bring huge pressure on the environment and resources in the future. Therefore, based on the comprehensive analysis, implementing the one-child policy will help slow down China’s population growth, control the number of populations, optimize the population structure, so as to reduce carbon emissions. In terms of employment structure and consumption structure, we should strengthen policy guidance and market incentives, raising people’s low-carbon awareness, optimizing energy-consumption structure, improving energy efficiency, so as to effectively control China’s carbon emissions.
Highlights
In the 21st century, global warming has become the most important challenge as an international environmental problem for mankind [1]
The results showed that population had the greatest impact on carbon dioxide emissions in Shanxi Province [19]
The results showed that the residual sequence had no unit root, was a stationary time series, and had a (1,1) order cointegration
Summary
In the 21st century, global warming has become the most important challenge as an international environmental problem for mankind [1]. Greenhouse gas is considered to be the main cause of global warming, especially carbon dioxide [2]. Due to the sharp increase in energy consumption, carbon dioxide emissions accelerate global warming. 2020, the International Energy Agency (IEA) released the 2019 Global Carbon Emissions. The global carbon emissions were about to be 33 billion tons in 2019. With the development of the economy and the increasing energy consumption, China is facing great pressure and challenges in the reduction of carbon emissions.
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