Albalate, Daniel;
Bel, Germa;
Teixido, Jordi J;
(2023)
The influence of population aging on global climate policy.
Population and Environment
, 45
(3)
, Article 13. 10.1007/s11111-023-00425-4.
Preview |
PDF
2023 PE ABT.pdf - Published Version Download (8MB) | Preview |
Abstract
We study the connection between the demographic transition to an aging population and global climate policy ambition in the outcomes from recent international agreements on climate change: We test whether the share of the elderly in a population is a significant determinant of the quantity and ambition of a country’s policy actions against climate change. We use different indicators of climate policy ambition as measured by the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) of the Paris Agreement as updated in the Glasgow Climate Pact. We also use the number of climate change laws passed in a country to further test robustness of main results. We resort to instrumental variables as part of our identification strategy to account for potential endogeneity. Our econometric results indicate a negative association between the share of the elderly and both policy ambition in climate agreements and the intensity of regulatory initiatives to fight climate change. This suggests that the increasing political influence of the older population as a consequence of aging hinders climate policy ambition. Policy implications are discussed.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | The influence of population aging on global climate policy |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s11111-023-00425-4 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1007/s11111-023-00425-4 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| Keywords: | Climate policy · COP26 · Paris agreement · NDCs · Population aging |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Political Science |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10217675 |
Archive Staff Only
 |
View Item |
