Mexico’s Carbon Inequality: Why Income Matters

Income inequality poses a significant challenge for many countries, including Mexico. By 2018, according to CONEVAL, 52.4 million Mexicans were living in poverty, equalling 41.9% of the population. Mexico’s status as the 15th largest economy worldwide makes it a compelling case for analysing income distribution and its impacts on social class structure, particularly since Mexico was the 11th largest GHG emitter. This study focuses on exploring the dynamics of income and carbon inequality, assessing the differences between deciles, geographic domains such as urban and rural ones and 32 States. We do this by using Mexico’s 2018 National Household Income and Expenditure Survey coupled with an environmentally extended multi-regional input-output model to estimate decile’s consumption-based carbon footprints. We find that per capita GHG emissions by the 1% ultra-rich were 12 and 8.5 times bigger than the 10% low- and middle-income deciles, respectively. As such only a quarter of the Mexican population is within the Paris Agreement carbon budget (less than 2.2 tCO2e per capita). Reducing poverty and inequalities seems imperative for a country that is and will continue to be largely affected by climate change. Still, it should not come at the expense of increasing the carbon footprint per capita.