Abstract
This study examines the temporal stability of the population/environment relationship. We analyze panel data from 1960 to 2005 to determine whether the national-level association between population and carbon dioxide emissions has remained stable, declined, or intensified in recent decades. Results indicate that population size has a large and stable positive association with anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. The findings of temporal stability generally hold for both developed countries and less-developed countries. The authors conclude that population, in tandem with other social drivers, remains an important consideration for research that addresses the human dimensions of global environmental change.
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Notes
As suggested by an anonymous reviewer, projections for population and emissions are available. While we recognize that other studies include such future projected estimates, we elect to exclude them since projections are unavailable for our control variables, and projections could introduce unknown error into the model estimates.
However, we acknowledge that such restrictions lead to the exclusion of many other nations from the analyses. Nonetheless, the representation of nations within and the temporal depth of our study are both strong relative to most cross-national investigations in the social sciences.
With Stata, the fixed effects are estimated with the “within estimator”, which involves a mean deviation algorithm for the dependent variable and each time-varying independent variable.
CAIT provides a comprehensive and comparable database of greenhouse gas emissions data (including all major sources and sinks) and other climate-relevant indicators. In order to provide the most complete and accurate dataset, CAIT compiles data from three sources—the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, the International Energy Agency, and the Energy Information Administration.
To maintain the relatively large sample sizes and balanced character of the panel datasets, we only include time-variant predictors with adequate available data that are consistently shown in prior research to impact total anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. However, in sensitivity analyses available upon request, we also include measures of manufacturing as percent GDP, services as percent GDP, level of democratization and state strength, environmental international nongovernmental presence, foreign direct investment in the manufacturing sector, domestic investment, population age structure, and population density. The latter was suggested by an anonymous reviewer. While the inclusion of these predictors greatly reduces the overall sample sizes and leads to unbalanced panel datasets, the results of the sensitivity analyses are consistent with the reported findings.
In unreported analyses, we estimate the models for datasets for nations falling in each income quartile (i.e., four unique datasets). We also estimate additional models for three unique datasets of high income, middle income, and low income nations. The results of all additional model estimates for these unique datasets are entirely consistent with the findings reported here, meaning the coefficients for all interactions between time and population are non-significant. Further, diagnostics indicate that the datasets used in the reported analyses or unreported sensitivity analyses do not include any overly influential cases. We thank both anonymous reviewers for suggesting we consider such sensitivity analyses.
Results of xtserial tests in Stata indicate the presence of autocorrelation. Thus, in sensitivity analyses available upon request we added an AR(1) correction and re-estimated all FE models with the “xtregar” suite of commands. The results are substantively identical to the reported findings. Given the consistency in results with and without the correction, we elect to report the models without the AR(1) since the models with the correction involve dropping the observations for the first time point.
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The authors thank the anonymous reviewers and editor for very helpful suggestions on a prior draft.
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Jorgenson, A.K., Clark, B. Assessing the temporal stability of the population/environment relationship in comparative perspective: a cross-national panel study of carbon dioxide emissions, 1960–2005. Popul Environ 32, 27–41 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11111-010-0117-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11111-010-0117-x