Age-structure,urbanization, and climate change in developed countries: revisiting STIRPAT for disaggregated population and consumption-related environmental impacts

We focus on three environmental impacts particularly influenced by population age-structure—carbon emissions from transport and residential energy and electricity consumption—as well as aggregate carbon emissions for a panel of developed countries, and take as our starting point the Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence, and Technology (STIRPAT) framework. Among our contributions is to further disaggregate population into three particularly key age groups: 20–34, 35–49, and 50–64, and by doing so demonstrate that population’s environmental impact differs considerably across age groups, with the older age groups (ones typically associated with larger households) actually exerting a negative influence. Furthermore, those age-specific population influences are different (in absolute and relative terms) for the different environmental impacts we analyze. Also, we find that urbanization, in developed countries, best measures access to a country’s power grid, and thus, is positively associated with energy consumption in the residential sector. Finally, we suggest some modeling and methodological improvements to the STIRPAT framework.