The Role of People versus Places in Individual Carbon Emissions
American Economic Review · 2025 · Volume 115 · Issue 5
Abstract
There is substantial spatial heterogeneity in household carbon emissions. I leverage movers in two decades of administrative Decennial Census and American Community Survey data to estimate place effects—the amount by which carbon emissions change for the same household living in different places—for almost 1,000 cities and roughly 61,500 neighborhoods across the United States. I estimate that place effects account for 14–23 percent of overall heterogeneity. A change in neighborhood-level place effects from 1 standard deviation above the mean to 1 below would reduce household carbon emissions from residential energy and commuting by about 40 percent.
Keywords
Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis, Intertemporal Household Choice, Life Cycle Models and Saving, Electric Utilities, Energy: Demand and Supply, Prices, Climate, Natural Disasters and Their Management, Global Warming, Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes, Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics: Regional Migration, Regional Labor Markets, Population, Neighborhood Characteristics
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