How does urbanization affect the carbon intensity of human well-being? A global assessment

Abstract

While scholars have widely discussed the relationship between urbanization, economic development and environmental degradation, little is known about how urbanization affects human well-being. This paper examines the effects of urbanization on the carbon intensity of human well-being (CIWB) in 125 countries in the period of 1990–2017. The CIWB is an indicator that reflects the nexus between environmental pressure and humans living standards. According to the principle of the CIWB, our results reveal that CIWB values declined over the study period, which represents an optimistic outcome in that it indicates that human well-being increased at a faster rate than increases in per capita CO<inf>2</inf> emissions. By employing a two-way fixed effects of Prais-Winsten regression approach, we evaluated the influence of urbanization on the CIWB in countries with various urbanization levels. Our study further selected five international cooperative organizations, each characterized by their own urbanization levels, in order to further understand whether different urbanization levels exert different impacts on the CIWB. The empirical results showed the existence of obvious differences in these effects: urbanization is shown to have prominently reduced the CIWB in countries with low and medium levels of urbanization, while it may increase the CIWB in highly urbanized countries. The empirical results obtained in relation to the cooperative organizations approximately accord with the results obtained in relation to the countries when grouped by urbanization level. The study reinforces the importance of scientific urban planning, environmental and population policies for the sustainable development of countries at different stages of urbanization.