Gender and climate change: do men emit more GHG than women?

Antonin Pottier, Emmanuel Combet () and Simona de Lauretis ()
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Emmanuel Combet: ADEME
Simona de Lauretis: EDF Ð CIRED

No 2025.09, Working Papers from FAERE - French Association of Environmental and Resource Economists

Abstract: This paper discusses the differential contributions of men and women to consumption- based emissions. The effect of gender on GHG emissions is difficult to assess because it correlates with other determinants, such as income and the size and composition of household that people are part of. We review the scant evidence available in the literature, with equivocal results. Using consumption-based emissions of French households, we show that pooling households of different size and composition cannot provide reliable estimates of the effect of gender of the head of household on emissions. Our empirical strategy therefore focuses on one-person households. With multi-variate regressions, we find that, other things being equal, there is no significant difference between single men and women, provided they are younger than 80. Women over 80 years old emit less than their male counterparts, a difference which can be traced back to their very low usage of car.

Keywords: inequality; GHG emissions; carbon footprint; gender; households; income and expenditure survey (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 D14 D30 D31 J16 Q56 R20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2025-11
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fae:wpaper:2025.09

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