Essais Sur Les Inégalités Mondiales De Revenu Et De Pollution
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ÉCOLE DES HAUTES ÉTUDES EN SCIENCES SOCIALES PARIS SCIENCES LETTRES RESEARCH UNIVERSITY Thèse pour l’obtention du grade de docteur en sciences économiques de l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales Lucas CHANCEL Insoutenables inégalités ? Essais sur les inégalités mondiales de revenu et de pollution Directeur de thèse : Thomas Piketty Jury Rapporteurs: Branko Milanovic City University New York Thomas Sterner University of Gothenburg Directeur: Thomas Piketty EHESS – Ecole d'Economie de Paris Examinateurs: Yann Algan Sciences Po Paris Michael Förster OCDE Julia Steinberger Leeds University ÉCOLE DES HAUTES ÉTUDES EN SCIENCES SOCIALES PARIS SCIENCES LETTRES RESEARCH UNIVERSITY PHD THESIS to obtain the title of Doctor of Philosophy of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Economics Lucas CHANCEL Unsustainable inequalities? Essays on global income and pollution inequality Thesis advisor : Thomas Piketty Jury Reviewers: Branko Milanovic City University New York Thomas Sterner University of Gothenburg Director: Thomas Piketty EHESS – Paris School of Economics Examinators: Yann Algan Sciences Po Paris Michael Förster OECD Julia Steinberger Leeds University Acknowledgments This thesis owes an immense tribute to all those who have crossed my way over the past years. Thomas Piketty has been a fantastic thesis advisor. He passed on to me his passion for research and conception of economics: a discipline open to dialogue with other social or natural sciences and to the service society. Tancrède Voituriez has been an indefectible friend and source of encouragement throughout, with a generosity that cannot be matched. This work also benefitted from the help of several IDDRI colleagues, in particular Michel Colombier, and Laurence Tubiana who supported me the early steps of this work. Mathieu Saujot has been a wonderful co-author and comrade. I also owe to Louis Chauvel at SciencesPo and James Keirsted at Imperial College. Let me also thank Yann Algan, who gave me my first opportunity to teach. It taught me in return me that there is no better way to do research than to constantly confront it to the test of pedagogy. I am also grateful to Bruno Latour, who created, along with Richard Descoings, the joint degree in Sciences and social sciences at Sciences Po and UPMC in Paris. This research benefitted from numerous exchanges with colleagues over the five continents, working on, or interested in, sustainability and its interactions with economics and social sciences. These include Robbie Andrew, Eric Beinhocker, Gael Callonnec, Emmanuel Combet, Damien Demailly, Timothée Erard, Julien Grenet, Emmanuel Guérin, Chris Lakner, Aurore Lalucq, Eloi Laurent, Nathalie Lazaric, Branko Milanovic, Glenn Peters, Prabodh Pourrouchottamin, Narasimha Rao, Teresa Ribera, Julia Steinberger, Xavier Timbault, Thomas Sterner, Thomas Spencer, Dimitri Zenghelis. I would also like to thank my fellow co-directors of the World Inequality Lab, Facundo Alvaredo, Emmanuel Saez, Gabriel Zucman for their trust. It is also a great pleasure to work around talented researchers such as Lydia Assouad, Nitin Bharti, Antoine Bozio, Thomas Breda, Luis Bauluz, Thomas Blanchet, Denis Cogneau, Amory Gethin, Julien Grenet, Clara Martinez, Ignacio Flores, Marc Morgan, Clara Martinez, Li Yang and the entire team at the World Inequality Lab. I am also particularly grateful to Sylvie Lambert and the PSE team for their benevolent help. Last but not least, I thank my family and my friends, who have always been an endless source of inspiration and motivation, without which this work would simply not have been possible. INTRODUCTION & SUMMARY ..................................................................... 11 PART I – INCOME INEQUALITY .................................................................. 20 Chapter 1 – Indian income inequality, 1922-2015 .............................................. 21 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................ 22 2 Entering the digital age without inequality data ................................................ 24 i. Economic policy shifts since the 1980s ......................................................................... 24 ii. The income inequality data gap .................................................................................. 26 3 Data sources and Methodology ........................................................................... 28 i. Description of the different data sources ..................................................................... 28 ii. Methodology ................................................................................................................ 35 4 Results ................................................................................................................ 41 i. Sharp rise in top income shares since the mid-1980s ................................................... 42 ii. Fall in Middle 40% and bottom 50% shares ................................................................ 43 iii. Total growth rates by income group ....................................................................... 44 iv. Growing share of income gap explained by top incomes ......................................... 46 v. Measurement issues and robustness tests .................................................................... 47 5 Discussion ........................................................................................................... 49 i. The mid-1980s turnaround .......................................................................................... 50 ii. Shining India for the rich mostly? ............................................................................... 52 6 Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 53 Chapter 2 - Building a global distribution of income brick by brick .................. 77 1 Introduction: managing data limitations to construct a global income distribution ......................................................................................................................... 78 2 Methodology ....................................................................................................... 80 i. National Income estimates ........................................................................................... 82 ii. Distributional National Accounts estimates ................................................................ 83 iii. Global inequality projections ................................................................................... 85 3 Global income inequality between countries (1950-2016) .................................... 86 i. National income is more meaningful than GDP to compare income inequalities between countries .......................................................................................................................... 87 ii. Asian growth contributed to reduce inequality between countries over the past decades 89 iii. Diverging forces were also at play in certain parts of the world, such as sub- Saharan Africa and Latin America. .............................................................................................. 91 4 Global income inequality between individuals (1980-2016) ................................. 92 i. Income inequality between main world regions ........................................................... 92 ii. The elephant curve of global inequality and growth .................................................... 96 iii. The geography of global income inequality was transformed over the past decades 100 iv. The moderate decline of global inequality since 2000 vs. the rise of within-country inequality 101 v. Market exchange rate vs Purchasing Power Parity measures of global inequality .... 103 5 Projecting the future of global income inequality ............................................. 104 i. Under business as usual, global inequality will continue to rise, despite strong growth in low-income countries. .............................................................................................................. 105 ii. Within country inequality trends are critical for global poverty eradication ............. 106 6 Conclusion ......................................................................................................... 108 PART II – ENVIRONMENTAL INEQUALITY ............................................. 138 Chapter 3 - Are younger generations higher carbon emitters than their elders? .................................................................................................................................. 139 1 Introduction ...................................................................................................... 140 2 Inequalities, generations and household CO2 emissions .................................... 141 i. Drivers of household direct CO2 emissions ................................................................ 141 ii. Measuring generational impacts on CO2 emissions .................................................... 143 3 Methodology ..................................................................................................... 147 i. Constructing direct household CO2 footprints from French and American budget surveys 147 ii. Age Period Cohort estimations .................................................................................. 150 4 Results and analysis .........................................................................................