Political and distributive consequences of the de-carbonized welfare state

Many environmental policies currently being enacted to slow climate change have distributive - and thereby political implications.

Policy instruments such as carbon taxes and fees tend to be regressive, as they weigh more heavily on the poor who spend a larger share of their budgets on energy.

Without a redistributive social agenda, countries may be caught in a vicious cycle of green policy adjustments, increased inequalities, and an erosion of political support.

This project analyzes how distributional effects of de-carbonizing policies are moderated by redistributive social policies, and how this in turn affects the support of incumbent governments.

We develop a new methodology for estimating individual-level distributional effects of environmental policies in countries with different social policy systems, and a novel analytical approach for estimating the effects on political support using a combination of policy and poll-of-polls data. The project generates new knowledge on how countries can develop socially sustainable de-carbonizing policies.