Understanding regional inequality in per capita CO₂ emissions in China during 1997-2016: sources and driving factors

As the largest carbon dioxide (CO₂) emitter, China exists obvious regional inequality in per capita CO₂ emissions. However, such inequality and its dynamic change for recent years have not been systematically studied. In this paper, we evaluate China's regional inequality in per capita CO₂ emissions during 1997-2016 using the Theil index and decompose it into within-region and between-region components based on eight regions. Furthermore, we apply the decomposition analysis to explore the contribution of different factors to such inequality, including the carbonization index, energy intensity, energy structure, labor productivity, and employment rate. The results show that China's overall inequality in per capita CO₂ emissions reduced first and increased thereafter during 1997-2016. Within-region inequality was the main source of overall inequality in 1997-2004, while between-region inequality contributed more during 2005-2016. Labor productivity and energy intensity were the two main drivers of overall inequality, but their contributions to the inequality between regions and within regions were quite different. Moreover, the impact of energy structure and carbonization index on regional inequality in per capita CO₂ emissions significantly increased during 2012-2016, which was related to the efforts made by local governments to improve the energy mix. Policy implications were given according to the above conclusions to improve regional inequality in per capita CO₂ emissions.