The carbon intensity of well-being (CIWB) (a ratio measuring the amount of CO₂ emitted per unit of life expectancy at birth) is an increasingly popular way to measure the ecological efficiency of nations. Although research demonstrates that economic development typically reduces this efficiency, little research has explored the extent to which social equality improves it. This study uses panel data for 70 nations between 1995 and 2013 to assess how various aspects of gender equality affect the ecological efficiency of nations. We estimate a series of Prais-Winsten regression models with panel-corrected standard errors (PCSE) to assess how increases in the percentage of women in parliament, expected years of education for women, and the percentage of women in the labor force independently affect CIWB. Our findings indicate that across all nations, increases in the percentage of women in parliament and expected years of schooling reduce CIWB; however, increases in the percentage of women in the labor force increase CIWB. Our results further show that the relationship between different dimensions of gender equality and CIWB differs between more developed and less developed nations. Finally, we find that increases in the number of women in parliament and women’s education attenuate the relationship between women’s labor force participation and CIWB. We discuss the variation in our results by reviewing relevant eco-gender literatures and feminist economics.

We explore how renewable electricity production influences nuclear energy and fossil fuel use in the electricity sector for 109 nations from 1960-2015 and how such patterns change over time. We find that although a one-unit increase in the number of kWh produced from renewable sources does not appear to displace an equivalent number of kWh from fossil fuels, such an increase is associated with an equivalent reduction in the number of kWh drawn from nuclear sources between 1960 and 2015. However, further analyses indicate that there has been a trend toward displacement of fossil fuel sources by renewables, as well as an attenuation of the displacement of nuclear sources by renewables, since the late 1990s in nations with the capacity for nuclear electricity production. These findings suggest that social, political, and economic processes may prevent renewables from being deployed such that they decarbonize the existing electricity grid, especially outside of the 31 nations capable of producing electricity from nuclear energy sources.

A key concern when crafting sustainable development policy is maximizing the benefits that derive from economic growth, such as increases in life-expectancy, while also reducing the negative impact that such growth has on environmental systems. In order to explore such tradeoffs research in environmental sociology has focused on a measurement of socio-environmental intensity known as the carbon intensity of well-being (CIWB). We explore the asymmetrical relationship between economic activity and CIWB for 153 nations from 1961–2013, as well as the theoretical implications of such a relationship. We initially find that in developed nations economic growth has no significant relationship to CWIB, however, declines in economic activity do significantly reduce CIWB. In less developed nations we find that increases and decreases in economic development are both significantly associated to CIWB and have associations which are not distinguishable from one another in magnitude. In an attempt to better understand these differences, we take financial processes into account, finding that such considerations account for the finding of asymmetry. Taken together, the findings of this study demonstrate the importance of considering the possibility of directional asymmetry, as well as the theoretical implications of such asymmetry, when specifying statistical models for regression analyses.

We contribute to literature exploring the socioecological impact of urban development as a multidimensional project, one in which changes to landscape features complement changes in demographic and administrative measures to co-constitute the socioecological impact of urbanity. We use a random coefficients modeling approach to examine U.S. relationships between the intensity of impervious surface within a county, population density in impervious areas, and carbon intensity of well-being (CIWB)—here constructed using industrial emissions. We then explore the moderating association that another component of social settlement patterns, household median income, has on the impervious surface–population density–CIWB nexus. Findings suggest that landscapes featuring greater development of impervious surface are associated with increased CIWB. Further exploration indicates that income acts to attenuate the association of urban space and CIWB. Ultimately, we argue that such attenuation indicates that more affluent areas are able to shift production-based processes associated with urban forms to less affluent areas.

Conceptual discussions of sustainability emphasize the interdependent relationship between relevant social and environmental factors. Yet, traditional quantitative analyses of the topic have tended to estimate the exogenous or direct/indirect effects a predictor variable has on a particular measure of sustainability. We examine the endogenous, interdependent relationship between the three E’s of sustainability (economy, equity, and ecology), incorporating country-level data for 1990 through 2015 into cross-lagged structural equation models with reciprocal and fixed effects. Results from these longitudinal models suggest that over time, at the country level, increasing economic inequality reduces renewable energy consumption, with no evidence of reciprocal feedback. Keeping in mind the limitations of the analysis, we tentatively argue that the modern form of development has constrained the potential for the sustainability goals to feed back into each other.

Financial processes have changed how economic growth is carried out, yet little research has been done examining how financialization affects the well-established association between economic activity and emissions. We construct fixed effects regression analyses with robust standard errors for 172 nations between 1960 and 2014. In this article, we estimate financial processes’ moderation of the association between GDP per capita and CO₂ emissions per capita, as well as whether or not such processes reduce the environmental intensity of manufacturing activities. We find that financialization decouples total GDP per capita from emissions per capita but fails to do so for growth from manufacture. Noting the absolute rise in manufacturing activity, we argue that the economic reorganization that financialization represents may obfuscate the ongoing pressure that economic growth places on the environment.