Impact of Income Inequality on Carbon Emission Efficiency: Evidence from China

Xiulan Chen, Zihan Niu and Yue Xu ()
Additional contact information
Xiulan Chen: School of Management, China University of Mining and Technology-Beijing, Beijing 100083, China
Zihan Niu: School of Management, China University of Mining and Technology-Beijing, Beijing 100083, China
Yue Xu: School of Management, China University of Mining and Technology-Beijing, Beijing 100083, China

Sustainability, 2025, vol. 17, issue 9, 1-17

Abstract: Alleviating income inequality and improving carbon emission efficiency are essential objective functions of China’s economic transformation and development, and there is an internal connection between them that cannot be ignored. This analysis adopts a fixed-effects model consisting of data from 30 provincial-level regions in China from 2013 to 2022, combined with the adjustment effect and threshold effect models, to empirically test the proposed theoretical hypothesis. The study found the following: (1) Rising income inequality significantly inhibits carbon emission efficiency. (2) Increasing population aging will strengthen the negative correlation between income inequality and carbon emission efficiency. (3) An increase in economic growth will weaken the negative correlation between income inequality and carbon emission efficiency. (4) Due to population aging and economic growth, a non-linear threshold exists between income inequality and carbon emission efficiency. The research provides decision-making references for coordinating the high-quality development of the regional economy.

Keywords: income inequality; carbon emission efficiency; population aging; economic growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/9/3930/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/9/3930/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:17:y:2025:i:9:p:3930-:d:1643751

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().