Do Philippine Households Lead a Carbon Intensive Lifestyle?

This paper estimates carbon emission from household consumption and investigates its determinants. We derive total household carbon emission by using the mechanism of input-output analysis combine with household expenditure for 2005 and 2006. Our estimation shows that fuel and light followed by transportation are the most carbon intensive goods while nondurable goods are the least carbon intensive. After controlling for household characteristics, the analyses reveal that income has a significant nonlinear relationship with carbon emission depicting an inverted U-shaped. However, when using asset index as proxy for households’ economic status, no turning point is observed and emission increases as households accumulate more assets. Quintile estimates show that there is a huge disparity in emission between households from the poorest quintile and richest quintile. With this, an option for low-carbon consumption is deemed necessary; else it is imminent that households tend to lead a carbon intensive lifestyle as they get more affluent.