IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/endesu/v15y2013i5p1173-1187.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Towards a contraction and convergence target based on population life expectancies since 1960

Author

Listed:
  • Paul Read
  • Janet Stanley
  • Dianne Vella-Brodrick
  • Dave Griggs

Abstract

This paper explores a finding that emerged in the early phases of a multidisciplinary project applying population health and psychology to issues of social progress and sustainability. Across 180 countries and half a century of data, the levels of carbon emissions per capita that maximise life expectancy fall within a tight band averaging only 6.6 tonnes—considerably less than wealthier countries emit per person. Various tests fail to break down the curves and, although the authors remain cautious, the stability since 1960 offers implications for the carbon budget leading up to 2050. This is the first time these curves have been contextualised against established climate science, with timely implications for international negotiations on sustainability and development. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013

Suggested Citation

  • Paul Read & Janet Stanley & Dianne Vella-Brodrick & Dave Griggs, 2013. "Towards a contraction and convergence target based on population life expectancies since 1960," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 15(5), pages 1173-1187, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:endesu:v:15:y:2013:i:5:p:1173-1187
    DOI: 10.1007/s10668-012-9432-y
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10668-012-9432-y
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10668-012-9432-y?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sen, Amartya, 1981. "Public Action and the Quality of Life in Developing Countries," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 43(4), pages 287-319, November.
    2. Frey, Bruno S & Stutzer, Alois, 2000. "Happiness, Economy and Institutions," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 110(466), pages 918-938, October.
    3. Stern, David I., 2004. "The Rise and Fall of the Environmental Kuznets Curve," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 32(8), pages 1419-1439, August.
    4. Stern,Nicholas, 2007. "The Economics of Climate Change," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521700801.
    5. Garnaut,Ross, 2011. "The Garnaut Review 2011," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107691681.
    6. Betsey Stevenson & Justin Wolfers, 2009. "The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 1(2), pages 190-225, August.
    7. John Harte & Annette Ostling & Jessica L. Green & Ann Kinzig, 2004. "Climate change and extinction risk," Nature, Nature, vol. 430(6995), pages 34-34, July.
    8. Ruwan Jayasuriya & Quentin Wodon, 2003. "Efficiency in Reaching the Millennium Development Goals," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 13884, December.
    9. Bruno S. Frey, 2018. "Economics of Happiness," SpringerBriefs in Economics, Springer, number 978-3-319-75807-7, October.
    10. Richard Easterlin, "undated". "Diminishing Marginal Utility of Income? A Caveat," University of Southern California Legal Working Paper Series usclwps-1004, University of Southern California Law School.
    11. Max-Neef, Manfred, 1995. "Economic growth and quality of life: a threshold hypothesis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 115-118, November.
    12. Easterlin, Richard A., 1974. "Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot? Some Empirical Evidence," MPRA Paper 111773, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Julia K. Steinberger & J. Timmons Roberts & Glen P. Peters & Giovanni Baiocchi, 2012. "Pathways of human development and carbon emissions embodied in trade," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 2(2), pages 81-85, February.
    14. Frank Jotzo & Paul J. Burke & Peter J. Wood & Andrew Macintosh & David I. Stern, 2012. "Decomposing the 2010 global carbon dioxide emissions rebound," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 2(4), pages 213-214, April.
    15. Richard Eckersley, 2006. "Progress, sustainability and human well-being: is a new worldview emerging?," International Journal of Innovation and Sustainable Development, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 1(4), pages 304-317.
    16. Andrei Bougrov & Robert Johnson & Benno Ndulo & Pedro Paez & Avinash Persaud & Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul & Akhtar Aziz Zeti & Charles Goodhart & Jomo Kwame Sundaram & Youssef Boutros-Ghali & José Anto, 2010. "The Stiglitz Report," Working Papers hal-03415638, HAL.
    17. Timothy J. Coelli & D.S. Prasada Rao & Christopher J. O’Donnell & George E. Battese, 2005. "An Introduction to Efficiency and Productivity Analysis," Springer Books, Springer, edition 0, number 978-0-387-25895-9, December.
    18. Richard H. Steckel, 1982. "Height and Per Capita Income," NBER Working Papers 0880, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Seiford, Lawrence M. & Thrall, Robert M., 1990. "Recent developments in DEA : The mathematical programming approach to frontier analysis," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 46(1-2), pages 7-38.
    20. Malte Meinshausen & Nicolai Meinshausen & William Hare & Sarah C. B. Raper & Katja Frieler & Reto Knutti & David J. Frame & Myles R. Allen, 2009. "Greenhouse-gas emission targets for limiting global warming to 2 °C," Nature, Nature, vol. 458(7242), pages 1158-1162, April.
    21. Richard Easterlin, 2005. "Diminishing Marginal Utility of Income? Caveat Emptor," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 70(3), pages 243-255, February.
    22. William D. Nordhaus, 2007. "A Review of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 45(3), pages 686-702, September.
    23. Nicholas Stern, 2008. "The Economics of Climate Change," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(2), pages 1-37, May.
    24. Oswald, Andrew J., 2005. "On the Common Claim that Happiness Equations Demonstrate Diminishing Marginal Utility of Income," IZA Discussion Papers 1781, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    25. Ed Diener & Ed Sandvik & Larry Seidlitz & Marissa Diener, 1993. "The relationship between income and subjective well-being: Relative or absolute?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 28(3), pages 195-223, March.
    26. Alan D. Lopez & Colin D. Mathers & Majid Ezzati & Dean T. Jamison & Christopher J. L. Murray, 2006. "Global Burden of Disease and Risk Factors," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 7039, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Luca Coscieme & Paul Sutton & Lars F. Mortensen & Ida Kubiszewski & Robert Costanza & Katherine Trebeck & Federico M. Pulselli & Biagio F. Giannetti & Lorenzo Fioramonti, 2019. "Overcoming the Myths of Mainstream Economics to Enable a New Wellbeing Economy," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(16), pages 1-17, August.
    2. Oswald, Andrew J., 2008. "On the curvature of the reporting function from objective reality to subjective feelings," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 100(3), pages 369-372, September.
    3. David Bartram, 2011. "Economic Migration and Happiness: Comparing Immigrants’ and Natives’ Happiness Gains From Income," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 103(1), pages 57-76, August.
    4. Vendrik, Maarten C.M. & Woltjer, Geert B., 2007. "Happiness and loss aversion: Is utility concave or convex in relative income?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(7-8), pages 1423-1448, August.
    5. van den Bergh, J.C.J.M. & Botzen, W.J.W., 2015. "Monetary valuation of the social cost of CO2 emissions: A critical survey," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 33-46.
    6. Easterlin, Richard A. & Angelescu McVey, Laura & Switek, Maggie & Sawangfa, Onnicha & Zweig, Jacqueline Smith, 2011. "The Happiness-Income Paradox Revisited," IZA Discussion Papers 5799, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Stefano Bartolini & Ennio Bilancini & Francesco Sarracino, 2013. "Predicting the Trend of Well-Being in Germany: How Much Do Comparisons, Adaptation and Sociability Matter?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 114(2), pages 169-191, November.
    8. Simon Dietz & Nicholas Stern, 2014. "Endogenous growth, convexity of damages and climate risk: how Nordhaus� framework supports deep cuts in carbon emissions," GRI Working Papers 159, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    9. Vladimir Spokoiny & Mayya Zhilova, 2013. "Sharp deviation bounds for quadratic forms," SFB 649 Discussion Papers SFB649DP2013-035, Sonderforschungsbereich 649, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany.
    10. Oswald, Andrew J., 2005. "On the Common Claim that Happiness Equations Demonstrate Diminishing Marginal Utility of Income," IZA Discussion Papers 1781, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. John Gowdy & Aneel Salman, 2007. "Climate Change and Economic Development: A Pragmatic Approach (Invited Lecture)," The Pakistan Development Review, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, vol. 46(4), pages 337-350.
    12. Jiayuan Li & John Raine, 2014. "The Time Trend of Life Satisfaction in China," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 116(2), pages 409-427, April.
    13. Gowdy, John M., 2008. "Behavioral economics and climate change policy," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 68(3-4), pages 632-644, December.
    14. Claudia Kettner & Angela Köppl & Sigrid Stagl, 2014. "Towards an Operational Measurement of Socio-ecological Performance. WWWforEurope Working Paper No. 52," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 47154, April.
    15. Betsey Stevenson & Justin Wolfers, 2008. "Happiness Inequality in the United States," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 37(S2), pages 33-79, June.
    16. Christopher K. Hsee & Fei Xu & Ningyu Tang, 2008. "Two Recommendations on the Pursuit of Happiness," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 37(S2), pages 115-132, June.
    17. Ralph Hippe, 2015. "Why did the knowledge transition occur in the West and not in the East? ICT and the role of governments in Europe, East Asia and the Muslim world," GRI Working Papers 180, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    18. Antje Mertens & Miriam Beblo, 2016. "Self-Reported Satisfaction and the Economic Crisis of 2007–2010: Or How People in the UK and Germany Perceive a Severe Cyclical Downturn," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 125(2), pages 537-565, January.
    19. Stefano Bartolini & Ennio Bilancini & Maurizio Pugno, 2008. "Did the Decline in Social Capital Depress Americans’ Happiness?," Department of Economics University of Siena 540, Department of Economics, University of Siena.
    20. Dmitrij Minkin & Victoria Reyes-García, 2017. "Income and Wellbeing in a Society on the Verge to Market Integration: The Case of the Tsimane’ in the Bolivian Amazon," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 18(4), pages 993-1011, August.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:endesu:v:15:y:2013:i:5:p:1173-1187. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.