Influence of population and per capita income upon carbon dioxide emissions

Empirical models that explicitly account for the contributions of per capita income as well as population towards carbon dioxide emissions have been developed by carrying out a detailed econometric analysis of cross-country data obtained from World Bank sources over a number of years. Investigations into the statistical significance of the models developed revealed that accounting for population explicitly in the empirical modelling of emissions is far superior to lumping its contribution into per capita quantities, as was done in number of previous research works on empirical modelling of the emissions. The reason being, as clearly shown in this study, contributions towards CO2 emissions come from two different sources: one is the per capita income and the other is the population. Income per capita is the dominant factor in the low-income sector, and population is the dominant factor in the high-income sector. It is therefore the model in which contributions from income per capita and population towards the CO2 emissions are explicitly accounted for, has the capacity to estimate the global CO2 emissions with considerable accuracy. It is also shown that population density makes no contribution towards the model developed in this study, whereas urban population, income inequality, and number of vehicles in a country marginally alter the coefficients of the model.