An aging giant at the center of global warming: Population dynamics and its effect on CO 2 emissions in China.

Revealing the complex correlation between population aging and CO ₂ , and projecting their future dynamics are fundamentally necessary to inform effective policies toward a low-carbon and sustainable development in China. Differing from the existing studies, this study highlighted a quantitative investigation on the impact of aging on CO ₂ emissions across the different stages of regional development in China through a STIRPAT model based on balanced provincial panel data from 1995 to 2019, and projected the demographic change and CO ₂ emissions till 2050 by employing cohort model and scenario analysis. It is found that CO ₂ emissions in China has witnessed a significant growth during 1995-2019, and will exhibit an inverted U-shaped growth till 2050 with its peak appears between 2030 and 2040. Statistically, every 1% growth of aging population will cause a 0.62% increase in CO ₂ emissions in China. However, a big regional difference was also detected as aging contributed to CO ₂ reduction in the eastern region, but stimulated CO ₂ emissions in the central and western regions. Policy implications for achieving a low-carbon and aging-oriented sustainable development may include the integration of aging into the decision-making in industrial structure upgrading and CO ₂ emission reduction at both national and region levels, the promotion of further transition to low-carbon consumption and green products in the eastern region, and strengthening the deep fusion of aging-oriented industries with local resource and environmental endowment in the central and western regions such as the development of eco-agriculture and green pension industries.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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