Tracking household carbon inequality in China: Composition effect or coefficient effect?

Abstract

Reasonable allocation of carbon emission reduction tasks requires addressing household carbon inequality. This study aims to track characteristics of household carbon inequality in China using the recentered influence function (RIF) based on the Household Tracking Survey data in 2018 and the multi-regional input–output table. The Oaxaca–Binder decomposition based on RIF further decomposes household carbon inequality based on spatial heterogeneity into composition and coefficient effects. The results indicate that (1) household carbon inequality is widespread in China, generally close to the 60/30 distribution, favouring high-income families. Furthermore, (2) increases in income, wealth and economic burden and declining marriage rate promote household carbon inequality, which is suppressed by the development of education and the Internet and the increase in car ownership. Additionally, (3) the carbon inequality of urban households is smaller than that of rural households, which is contributed by the composition effects of family size, education, car ownership, Internet development and the coefficient effect of income and housing. Finally, (4) under the composition effect of family size and the coefficient effect of income, the household carbon inequality in the eastern region is smaller than in the central and western regions.