The intersecting impact of aging and affluence on China's household carbon emissions

China is undergoing a significant demographic shift toward “deep aging”, fundamentally shaping household consumption patterns and associated carbon footprints. Understanding how household carbon footprints (HCFs) evolve with consumption patterns across age groups is vital for effective climate mitigation. However, previous studies often treated elderly groups as homogeneous and overlooked the impact of income on HCFs within various age groups. This study addresses these gaps by calculating HCFs across different income-age groups and analyzing household consumption patterns and associated socioeconomic driving factors in China from 2011 to 2017. Results reveal notable disparities in HCFs among age groups within the high-income bracket, which lead to the overall lower per capita HCFs of the senior group. Further decomposition analysis shows that the growth rate of per capita expenditure among elderly households, especially high-income elderly, was the slowest over the study period. As a result, from 2011 to 2017, elderly households in China contributed less to the rise in carbon emissions. According to this study, elderly households exhibit lower income-expenditure elasticity and stick to steady consumption patterns, which slows the rise in their consumption as income grows, thereby slowing the increase in their HCFs. These findings suggest that with economic growth and rising incomes, China's aging population has contributed positively to reducing HCFs in recent years. However, the potential long-term effects of this trend require further investigation.