Environmental Kuznets Curves for Air Pollution in African and Developed Countries : Exploring Turning Point Incomes and the Role of Democracy

The Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis advances an inverted U-shaped relationship between economic growth and environmental pollution. Scholars have estimated turning point incomes for various pollutants within and across countries. However, the majority of these studies were conducted for developed countries. Very few studies have focused on developing countries. In particular, the relationship between economic growth and air pollution in Africa remains largely unexplored. In this paper, we test whether the EKC hypothesis holds for carbon dioxide (CO2) and particulate matter (PM10) emissions in African and high-income OECD countries. We find that the EKC hypothesis holds for both CO2 and PM10 for African and OECD countries. Further, our examination of the effect of democracy on air pollution reveals an insignificant effect for CO2 for both samples. However, democracy is positively and significantly correlated with PM10 emissions for African countries