Impactos da estrutura demográfica nas emissões de CO2 associadas ao consumo de energia no Brasil (2002-2016)

Abstract

Demographic structure changes and its effects on economy have attracted interest from the scientific community and society in recent years. Discussion is based on the perspective that demographic changes not only affect the economic growth, the labor market, health and social security systems, but also influence consumption, especially energy consumption. Transformations in population age structure are taking place in different parts of the world, and their impacts on energy consumption and pollutant emissions have not yet been clarified. In this sense, the present study aimed to analyze the demographic structure impacts on carbon dioxide emissions 〖(CO〗_2) associated to energy consumption in Brazil, using a panel data with the 27 federative units for the period between 2002 and 2016. For this, a two-stage regression model was used that allowed the total effect of the age structure on emissions to be divided into direct and indirect effects. This procedure made it possible to apply the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) method, which was used to control aspects related to the endogeneity of the model variables. The results obtained demonstrate that the proxies of the variables of physical capital stock per capita and human capital stock contribute to economic growth, on the other hand, the relationship between the proportion of the working-age population (WAP) and economic growth was negative. With regard to the role of carbon dioxide emissions, WAP is negatively related to emissions, while the relationship between economic growth, energy consumption and deforestation with CO2 emissions was positive. Therefore, the direct effect of the working-age population (WAP) on CO2 emissions was negative, while the indirect effect depends on the level of per capita income, since there is evidence of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (ECK) for emissions for the sample. analyzed. For the current stage of economic growth, the total effect is positively associated with WAP, since WAP-related emissions are presented as a growing and monotonic curve with the growth of per capita income.