Do welfare states have lower carbon emissions? The importance of state capacity in lower-income countries
Tobias Böhmelt et al.
Abstract
Do societies with more extensive welfare states also perform better environmentally? Surprisingly, the empirical evidence for this relationship remains inconclusive. We focus on CO 2 emissions in lower-income countries and argue that considering state capacity as a moderator helps achieving greater theoretical and empirical clarity in understanding when the welfare state – climate change mitigation relationship. We hypothesize that lower-income societies with more developed welfare states exhibit lower carbon emissions when they also have more state capacity. The underlying mechanism centers on the ability of the state to compensate losers from policy change and its enforcement power required for policy implementation. Using data on CO 2 emissions, social protection, and labor market regulations, as well as state capacity in 66 lower-income countries since 2005, we find that carbon emissions tend to be lower in countries characterized both by a welfare state focused on reducing socio-economic inequality and high state capacity.
3 citations
Evidence weight
Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40
| F · citation impact | 0.32 × 0.4 = 0.13 |
| M · momentum | 0.57 × 0.15 = 0.09 |
| V · venue signal | 0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03 |
| R · text relevance † | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.