Population age structure effects on carbon emission in China
There are many driving factors for carbon emissions such as economic level,industrial structure,energy consumption,technical level,total population and population structure. In recent years,it has become an important subject for monitoring and analyzing the impacts of human factors such as population on carbon emissions. However,research into populations and carbon emissions has focused on the investigation of size of population,and most research has ignored or over simplified the change in structural factors such as age structure during the process of demographic transition and emissions. Here,we refine population age structure and divide it into the groups 0~14,15~29,30~44,45~59 and over 60,then investigate the impact of population age structure on carbon emissions with the extended stochastic STIRPAT model in order to explain the influencing mechanism of population age structure on carbon emission in China. We found that population age structure has a significant impact on carbon emissions. It has a different impact on carbon emissions for different age groups. The impact is the largest for the group aged 30 to 44,and it is not significant for the group 15 to 29;the elastic coefficient of carbon emissions is negative for the group aged over 60. With China's aging population,it is possible that changes in population age structure will reduce carbon emissions whether in production or consumption channel. We discuss advice for reducing carbon emissions from the consumption channel.