Equality - a cure for carbon?

Abstract: Global climate change is probably the biggest challenge of our century, and even though research has attempted to uncover the social forces driving the emission of carbon, there is a lack of consensus among scholars. Some empirical research states that carbon emissions are lower in countries where women have higher political status. Others suggest that it is higher income inequality that explains the large emissions. This raises the following questions: Can countries different levels of carbon emissions be explained by their domestic level of equality? If so, what type of equality is the main driving force? This study uses a sample of 35 industrialised countries to investigate if the variation of carbon emission, in a period of 6 years, can be explained by the level of gender and income equality. Two models are constructed, in specific: an ordinary least squares regression model and an autoregressive model. In both models, I find that the level of emission is lower within countries with a higher score in the Global Gender Gap index, controlling for various other factors. However, the results do not with certainty establish a connection between higher income equality and lower levels of carbon emissions. The findings suggest that reducing the inequality between men and women may benefit efforts to reduce carbon emissions caused by industrialised countries. Yet, even though lower income inequality may be a goal in itself, its effect on the level of carbon emissions cannot be confirmed.