Beyond the Quest for a Technological Holy Grail: Patterns of Income Inequality and the Household Carbon Footprint in Turkey

Abstract

Utilizing data on household consumption expenditure patterns and sectorial greenhouse gas emissions, we study the extent of inequality over Turkish households' differentiated carbon footprint incidences. We harmonize the household budget survey data of the Turkish Statistical Institute (TURKSTAT) with production-based gas emissions data from EXIOBASE3 and investigate both the direct and indirect emissions across household-level income strata. Our calculations reveal that the households in the highest income decile alone are responsible for 19.4 percent of the overall (direct and indirect) emissions, whereas the bottom 10 percent of households are responsible for 4.3 percent. We also find that for direct emissions, the per-household average of the highest income decile exceeds that of the lowest income decile by a factor of 11.2. Notably, 87 percent of the indirect emissions budget for the poorest decile is linked to food and housing expenses, underscoring their susceptibility to climate policies. We confer that in designing the net-zero emission pathways to combat climate change, it would not suffice to study the technological transition of decarbonization solely and that the successful implementation of an indigenous environmental policy will ultimately depend upon the socio-economic factors of income distribution strata, indicators of consumption demand, and responsiveness of the individual households to react to price signals. © 2025 The Author(s).