Assessing the impacts of fertility and retirement policies on China’s carbon emissions

The gradual adjustment of fertility and retirement policies in China has social benefits in terms of coping with population aging. However, the environmental consequences of these policies remain ambiguous. Here we compile environmentally extended multiregional input–output tables to estimate household carbon footprints for different population age groups in China. Subsequently, we estimate the age-sex-specific population under different fertility policies up to 2060 and assess the impacts of fertility and retirement policies on household carbon footprints. We find that Chinese young people have relatively higher household carbon footprints than their older counterparts due to differences in income by age group. Relaxing fertility policies and delaying retirement age are associated with an increase in population (and labour supply) and thus increases in household carbon footprints, with the majority of these increases from the fertility side. These results may help policymakers understand interactions among those measures targeting population aging and climate action. Demographic policies to address population aging could have major climate consequences, and such interaction effect is context dependent. This study shows that relaxing the fertility policy and delaying retirement age in China could lead to an increase in total and per capita household carbon footprint.