CRIS Scientific Seminar 2024-2025

Friday, January 31th 2025, 11:00 am
Sciences Po, Room K011 (1, St-Thomas)

The gender gap in carbon footprint

Marion Leroutier

Applied environmental economist
Assistant Professor, CREST-ENSAE

Joint with Ondine Berland (Postdoc, LSE)
 

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This paper documents a significant gender gap in carbon footprints in food and transport, two categories accounting for half of individuals’ carbon footprints in high-income countries.

Using representative individual-level data from France matched with detailed product-level emission intensities, we find that women emit 26% less carbon than men. This gap is found both among couples and singles. It narrows down only to 16% controlling for age, education, household income, location, socio-professional category and employment status.

Women’s lower emissions are not only explained by biological factors such as lower calorie requirements, or by differences in employment characteristics such as shorter commutes. Even conditional on calories and distances travelled, women consume less carbon-intensive food and transportation, in part due to a lower share of red meat in their diet and a lower reliance on polluting cars.

The gap we uncover could be both a determinant and a consequence of other documented gender gaps, such as the gap in climate concerns. Our results imply that gender would warrant more consideration in the literature as a relevant dimension of footprint inequality.

To find out more about Marion Leroutier