Work Hours and CO2 Emissions: Evidence from U.S. Households

Anders Fremstad, Mark Paul and Anthony Underwood

Review of Political Economy, 2019, vol. 31, issue 1, 42-59

Abstract: The degrowth movement proposes worktime reduction policies to help high-income countries meet their climate goals while supporting full employment. However, the work hours elasticity of carbon emissions remains uncertain despite a growing number of empirical analyses. This paper estimates the impact of work hours on emissions using household data from the United States. We calculate the carbon intensity of goods using input-output tables from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which we combine with spending data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to estimate carbon footprints for a representative sample of U.S. households. There is strong evidence that households with longer work hours emit more CO2, but our household-level estimate of the work hours elasticity of carbon emissions is lower than most country-level estimates. Our results suggest that differences in work hours account for a small fraction of differences in per capita carbon footprints across high-income countries.Highlights Households with longer work hours have significantly larger carbon footprints.Our estimated household-level work hours elasticity is smaller than most country-level estimates.Work hour reduction policies likely generate modest reductions in carbon emissions.

Date: 2019
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DOI: 10.1080/09538259.2019.1592950

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