Institutions help to streamline the economic activity-related procedures, where government intervention might be involved. Institutions also play a significant role in social sustainability. The findings using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag approach to cointegration for the period from 1984–2019 reveal that investment portfolio and democratic accountability reduce poverty in Pakistan both in the long and short run. Moreover, democratic accountability helps to reduce income inequality, but the investment portfolio’s role is not significant. The literacy rate helps to reduce income inequality, and inflation increases poverty and income inequality. The remittances increase income inequality, and urbanization increases poverty. To eradicate poverty and income inequality, the governments should be accountable for their actions to the general public while they remain in power. If they do not deliver as per their manifestoes, they will not be reelected in the next election. Moreover, there is a dire need to redefine the role of an investment portfolio to reduce the risk of investment. So, investments would increase economic activities and could reduce poverty and income inequality. This study contributes to the literature by inquiring about the role of the investment portfolio and democratic accountability in social sustainability by reducing poverty and income inequality. This study only considers Pakistan’s economy due to limitations of poverty data availability in other countries. The scope could further be broadened by accessing data for a wider Asia region to test the role of the investment portfolio and democratic accountability to reduce poverty and income inequality.

The main objective of the present study was to examine the impact of socioeconomic factors on environmental degradation or preservation using the logarithmic mean disivia index (LMDI). The study used the latest data from thirty Chinese provinces from 2012 to 2020. Pooled mean group (PMG) results were estimated to determine the long-term and short-term impact of the aforementioned compound variables on carbon emissions. The study results revealed that population growth, per capita GDP growth, and fossil fuel-led energy consumption, positively impacted environmental degradation in China at the provincial level. However, clean energy intensity and a transition towards renewable energy in China are helping to reduce carbon emissions. Similarly, clean energy intensity is also helping to lower carbon emissions. The study proposed that at the provincial level, joint efforts were required to control environmental degradation in China. The positive impact of renewable energy intensity on carbon emissions encourages the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy sources for environmentally friendly growth.