Tian Peipei, Feng Kuishuang, Zheng Heran, Hubacek Klaus, Li Jiashuo, Zhong Honglin, Chen Xiangjie, Sun Laixiang
Institute of Blue and Green Development, Shandong University, 180 Wenhua Xilu, Weihai, 264209, China.
Department of Geographical Sciences, University of Maryland, 2181 LeFrak Hall, College Park, MD 20742, USA.
PNAS Nexus. 2023 Jul 18;2(7):pgad209. doi: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad209. eCollection 2023 Jul.
Understanding the impact of climate fiscal policies on vulnerable groups is a prerequisite for equitable climate mitigation. However, there has been a lack of attention to the impacts of such policies on the elderly, especially the low-income elderly, in existing climate policy literature. Here, we quantify and compare the distributional impacts of carbon pricing on different age-income groups in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan and then on different age groups in other 28 developed countries. We find that the elderly are more vulnerable to carbon pricing than younger groups in the same income group. In particular, the low-income elderly and elderly in less wealthy countries face greater challenges because carbon pricing lead to both higher rate of increase in living cost among low-income elderly and greater income inequality within the same age group. In addition, the low-income elderly would benefit less than the younger groups within the same income group in the commonly proposed carbon revenues recycling schemes. The high vulnerability of the low-income elderly to carbon pricing calls for targeted social protection along with climate mitigation polices toward an aging world.
了解气候财政政策对弱势群体的影响是公平减缓气候变化的前提条件。然而，现有气候政策文献中一直缺乏对这类政策对老年人，尤其是低收入老年人影响的关注。在此，我们量化并比较了碳定价对美国、英国和日本不同年龄-收入群体，以及其他28个发达国家不同年龄群体的分配影响。我们发现，在相同收入群体中，老年人比年轻人更容易受到碳定价的影响。特别是，低收入老年人以及较不富裕国家的老年人面临更大挑战，因为碳定价导致低收入老年人生活成本上涨幅度更高，且在同一年龄组内收入不平等加剧。此外，在通常提议的碳收入回收计划中，低收入老年人比同收入群体中的年轻人受益更少。低收入老年人对碳定价的高度脆弱性要求在应对老龄化世界的气候减缓政策之外，还要有针对性地实施社会保护。
