The relationship between state-level carbon emissions and average working hours in the United States: a replication study

Climate change is perhaps the most pressing problem facing humanity over the coming century. One proposed solution to climate change is reducing employee work hours which potentially allows for degrowth or the radical restructuring of the economy without greatly increasing unemployment. Using 2007-2013 data from the United States, research by Fitzgerald, Schor, and Jorgenson lent support to this policy option by finding a positive and statistically significant relationship between average work hours and state-level CO2 emissions. We replicated their analyses by including more recent data and confirmed the linkage between the average hours worked in a state and annual overall CO2 emissions. Moreover, we found that this direct relationship is stronger in the most recently added data (2014 to 2017). We conclude this replication exercise by providing additional policy suggestions.