IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bcu/greewp/greenwp19.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Climate Change and Income Inequalities

Author

Listed:
  • Maurizio Malpede
  • Marco Percoco

Abstract

The relationship between climate warming and associated socio-economic development is a central question for environmental economists and social scientists. The scientific literature focusing on the economic effects of climate change is mainly based on the cross-sectional impact of temperature and precipitation on GDP growth. However, little is known about the effects of climate variations on income inequality. This paper aims at filling this gap by exploring the relationship between climate and income inequality. We use two different country-level panel datasets on income inequality: i) the Standardized World Income Inequality Database (Solt, 2016), which provides the GINI index, and ii) the World Income Inequality Database (Wider, 2008), which provides the share of income held by different classes of the population. We then match the two-income inequality indices with annual climate data for 165 countries from 1960 to 2010. Our analysis suggests a significant Õˆ-shaped relationship between inequality indices and annual mean temperature.

Suggested Citation

  • Maurizio Malpede & Marco Percoco, 2021. "Climate Change and Income Inequalities," GREEN Working Papers 19, GREEN, Centre for Research on Geography, Resources, Environment, Energy & Networks, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy.
  • Handle: RePEc:bcu:greewp:greenwp19
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repec.unibocconi.it/iefe/bcu/papers/GREEN_wp19.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Melissa Dell & Benjamin F. Jones & Benjamin A. Olken, 2012. "Temperature Shocks and Economic Growth: Evidence from the Last Half Century," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 4(3), pages 66-95, July.
    2. Peter W. Gething & David L. Smith & Anand P. Patil & Andrew J. Tatem & Robert W. Snow & Simon I. Hay, 2010. "Climate change and the global malaria recession," Nature, Nature, vol. 465(7296), pages 342-345, May.
    3. Stephen Jenkins, 2015. "World income inequality databases: an assessment of WIID and SWIID," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 13(4), pages 629-671, December.
    4. Gregory Casey & Soheil Shayegh & Juan Moreno-Cruz & Martin Bunzl & Oded Galor & Ken Caldeira, 2019. "The Impact of Climate Change on Fertility," Department of Economics Working Papers 2019-04, Department of Economics, Williams College.
    5. Melissa Dell & Benjamin F. Jones & Benjamin A. Olken, 2009. "Temperature and Income: Reconciling New Cross-Sectional and Panel Estimates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(2), pages 198-204, May.
    6. Olivier Deschênes & Michael Greenstone, 2007. "The Economic Impacts of Climate Change: Evidence from Agricultural Output and Random Fluctuations in Weather," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(1), pages 354-385, March.
    7. Marshall Burke & Solomon M. Hsiang & Edward Miguel, 2015. "Climate and Conflict," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 7(1), pages 577-617, August.
    8. Anthony F. Shorrocks & Guanghua Wan, 2008. "Ungrouping Income Distributions: Synthesising Samples for Inequality and Poverty Analysis," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2008-16, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    9. Valentina Bosetti & Cristina Cattaneo & Giovanni Peri, 2021. "Should they stay or should they go? Climate migrants and local conflicts," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 21(4), pages 619-651.
    10. Emmerling, Johannes & Shayegh, Soheil & Dasgupta, Shouro, 2020. "Inequality and Growth Impacts from Climate Change—Insights from South Africa," RFF Working Paper Series 20-10, Resources for the Future.
    11. Frederick Solt, 2020. "Measuring Income Inequality Across Countries and Over Time: The Standardized World Income Inequality Database," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 101(3), pages 1183-1199, May.
    12. Frederick Solt, 2016. "The Standardized World Income Inequality Database," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 97(5), pages 1267-1281, November.
    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. Meierrieks, Daniel & Stadelmann, David, 2024. "Is temperature adversely related to economic development? Evidence on the short-run and the long-run links from sub-national data," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 136, pages 1-18.
    2. Emmerling, Johannes & Shayegh, Soheil & Dasgupta, Shouro, 2020. "Inequality and Growth Impacts from Climate Change—Insights from South Africa," RFF Working Paper Series 20-10, Resources for the Future.
    3. Ruth Hill & Trang Nguyen & Miki Khanh Doan, 2024. "Climate and Equity," World Bank Publications - Reports 42259, The World Bank Group.
    4. Kalemli-Özcan, Sebnem & Nikolsko–Rzhevskyy, Alex & Kwak, Jun Hee, 2020. "Does trade cause capital to flow? Evidence from historical rainfall," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    5. Jonathan Colmer, 2013. "Climate Variability, Child Labour and Schooling: Evidence on the Intensive and Extensive Margin," GRI Working Papers 132, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    6. Muinelo-Gallo, Leonel, 2022. "Business cycles and redistribution: The role of government quality," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 46(4).
    7. Ceren Baysan & Marshall Burke & Felipe González & Solomon Hsiang & Edward Miguel, 2018. "Economic and Non-Economic Factors in Violence: Evidence from Organized Crime, Suicides and Climate in Mexico," NBER Working Papers 24897, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. repec:ipg:wpaper:17 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Amlan Majumder & Takayoshi Kusago, 2021. "A consistency check of the World Income Inequality Database in favour of common readers," SN Business & Economics, Springer, vol. 1(7), pages 1-17, July.
    10. Jonathan Goyette & Maroua Smaoui, 2019. "Civil armed conflicts: the impact of the interaction between climate change and agricultural potential," RIEEM Discussion Paper Series 1903, Research Institute for Environmental Economics and Management, Waseda University.
    11. Baysan, Ceren & Burke, Marshall & González, Felipe & Hsiang, Solomon & Miguel, Edward, 2019. "Non-economic factors in violence: Evidence from organized crime, suicides and climate in Mexico," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 168(C), pages 434-452.
    12. Philippe Kabore & Nicholas Rivers, 2023. "Manufacturing output and extreme temperature: Evidence from Canada," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 56(1), pages 191-224, February.
    13. Sam Cosaert & Adrián Nieto & Konstantinos Tatsiramos, 2023. "Temperature and Joint Time Use," CESifo Working Paper Series 10464, CESifo.
    14. David Castells-Quintana & Maria del Pilar Lopez-Uribe & Tom McDermott, 2015. "Climate change and the geographical and institutional drivers of economic development," GRI Working Papers 198, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    15. Richard S.J. Tol, 2020. "The Economic Impact of Weather and Climate," Video Library 2094, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    16. Mumtaz, Haroon & Theophilopoulou, Angeliki, 2024. "The distributional effects of climate change. An empirical analysis," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    17. Berg, Kimberly A. & Curtis, Chadwick C. & Mark, Nelson C., 2024. "GDP and temperature: Evidence on cross-country response heterogeneity," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    18. Valenti, Giulia & Vona, Francesco, 2024. "Hot Wages: How Do Heat Waves Change the Earnings Distribution?," FEEM Working Papers 348848, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM).
    19. José-Luis Cruz & Esteban Rossi-Hansberg, 2024. "The Economic Geography of Global Warming," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 91(2), pages 899-939.
    20. Lopez-Uribe, Maria del Pilar & Castells-Quintana, David & McDermott, Thomas K. J., 2017. "Geography, institutions and development: a review ofthe long-run impacts of climate change," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 65147, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    21. Huang, Kaixing & Zhao, Hong & Huang, Jikun & Wang, Jinxia & Findlay, Christopher, 2020. "The impact of climate change on the labor allocation: Empirical evidence from China," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 104(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:bcu:greewp:greenwp19. 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: Carlotta Milani (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eabocit.html .

    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.