Ecological Cost of Inequality: Will Widening Income Inequality Increase Carbon Emissions?——Evidence from Nine ASEAN Countries

The carbon emissions of a country are closely related to the internal nature and structure of the economy. We constructed a simple binary model of wealth and poverty regarding carbon emissions, based on which we proposed hypotheses and analyzed the carbon emissions data of nine ASEAN countries from 1960 to 2020. We found a significant positive correlation between the Gini coefficient and carbon emissions. Expansion analysis reveals that the carbon increasing effect of economic inequality is mainly exerted through market mechanisms, with a more significant impact on higher levels of carbon emissions. In countries with better international competitiveness and more mature market development, income inequality should have a more significant promoting effect on carbon emissions. By mechanism analysis, widening income inequality significantly increases carbon emission intensity, suppresses import and export trade, and leads to an increase in per capita carbon emissions. However, government intervention and industrial structure optimization can weaken or even reverse this effect. The expansion of carbon emissions is a problem that arises in economic growth and ultimately needs to be addressed in high-quality development. Its true control may also require unremitting efforts to curb economic inequality.