Income inequality in the face of climate change: an empirical investigation on unequal nations, vulnerable regions and India
Swapnanil SenGupta () and
Aakansha Atal
Additional contact information
Swapnanil SenGupta: The University of Manchester
Aakansha Atal: Jawaharlal Nehru University
SN Business & Economics, 2024, vol. 4, issue 8, 1-33
Abstract:
Abstract Climate change is the paramount challenge of our era. While considerable attention has been given to its impact on financial stability and economic productivity, there is limited focus on its effects on income inequality. We introduce a unique criterion for sample selection. We aim to provide an empirical analysis of how climate change impacts income inequality in 43 most climate-vulnerable countries, 39 most unequal countries in terms of income distribution, and India separately (1971–2021). We select the most vulnerable countries to investigate the magnitude of income inequality caused by climate change. Given that climate hazards enhance inequality in countries with prevailing socioeconomic inequalities, we choose unequal countries to investigate whether climate change is a significant determinant of their existing condition. We also analyse the relationship for India because India is one of the most climate-vulnerable and unequal countries. We use three climate change indices—vulnerability to climate change, annual surface temperature change, and frequency of climate-related disasters—to check the effects of particular aspects of climate change. We deploy a standard panel regression analysis followed by a series of robustness checks and an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds test approach to analyse the link for India. We find that climate change has adverse impacts in both groups and in India, both in the long and short term. Our findings suggest that policymakers in developing countries may need to equally place importance on developmental and climate change abatement goals as well as expedite their environmental targets.
Keywords: Climate change; Income inequality; Panel data; India; Fixed effects regressions; ARDL Bounds Test (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 O10 O15 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s43546-024-00685-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
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:spr:snbeco:v:4:y:2024:i:8:d:10.1007_s43546-024-00685-8
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.springer.com/journal/43546
DOI: 10.1007/s43546-024-00685-8
Access Statistics for this article
SN Business & Economics is currently edited by Gino D'Oca
More articles in SN Business & Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().