Key Laboratory of Land Surface Pattern and Simulation, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China.
J Environ Manage. 2024 Mar;354:120434. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2024.120434. Epub 2024 Feb 27.
High carbon emissions and population aging are two obstacles to China's development as an emerging economy. It is urgent to scientifically examine the impacts of population aging on carbon emissions to discover new pathways for urban carbon emission reduction. However, existing studies face challenges in terms of focusing on and methodology for accurately capturing the role of industrial production and energy consumption in the environmental effects of population aging. This paper constructs a chain mediation analytical framework and systematically examines the intrinsic linkages between population aging and carbon emissions in Chinese cities from 2000 to 2020 using a two-way fixed effects model. This paper has three main findings. (1) The positive correlation between urban population aging and carbon emissions development is generally low, with coupling coordination degree values of 0.4233, 0.4458, 0.4220, 0.4715, and 0.4665 for each yearly cross-section. (2) For every 1% increase in the population aging rate, carbon emissions decrease by 0.3478% on average. The carbon reduction effect of population aging is significantly greater in low-emissions cities and high-income cities than in other cities. (3) The industrial upgrading (IU) path, energy conservation (EC) path and chain mediation (CM) path account for 72.43%, 7.23% and 20.34%, respectively, of the indirect effects. If the causal link between IU and EC is not considered, the EC effect will be overestimated by 281.16%. The results of the study suggest that properly coping with population aging and reducing carbon emissions are not completely opposed to each other, a conclusion that passes both endogeneity exclusion and robustness check. This paper advocates replacing the one-size-fits-all approach in carbon emissions management and investing more in policy preferences to support carbon emission reduction in both high-emissions and low-income cities.
高碳排放和人口老龄化是中国新兴经济体发展的两大障碍。科学考察人口老龄化对碳排放的影响，寻找城市碳减排的新途径迫在眉睫。然而，现有研究在关注和方法上都存在挑战，难以准确捕捉工业生产和能源消费在人口老龄化环境影响中的作用。本文构建了一个链式中介分析框架，利用双向固定效应模型系统考察了 2000 年至 2020 年中国城市人口老龄化与碳排放之间的内在联系。本文主要有三个发现。（1）城市人口老龄化与碳排放发展之间的正相关关系总体较低，每年的横截面耦合协调度值分别为 0.4233、0.4458、0.4220、0.4715 和 0.4665。（2）人口老龄化率每增加 1%，碳排放平均减少 0.3478%。人口老龄化的碳减排效应在低排放城市和高收入城市中明显大于其他城市。（3）产业升级（IU）路径、节能（EC）路径和链式中介（CM）路径分别占间接效应的 72.43%、7.23%和 20.34%。如果不考虑 IU 和 EC 之间的因果关系，EC 效应将被高估 281.16%。研究结果表明，妥善应对人口老龄化和减少碳排放并非完全相悖，这一结论通过了内生性排除和稳健性检验。本文主张在碳排放管理中摒弃一刀切的方法，加大对政策偏好的投资，以支持高排放和低收入城市的碳减排。
