Impact of population size on consumption-based carbon emissions in Sub-Saharan Africa : evidence from the method of moments quantile regression

Despite the plethora of studies on determinants of carbon dioxide emissions, studies that consider the role of population size in an environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) framework are scanty in the environmental literature. Relying on the stochastic impacts by regression on population, affluence, and technology (STIRPAT) model for analyzing environmental impacts, this study examined the impact of population size on consumption-based carbon dioxide emissions, controlling for per capita income, energy intensity, financial development, and natural resource rents in a panel of 19 Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries over the period 1995-2017. The study adopted the method of moments quantile regression (MM-QR) and Fixed Effects Ordinary Least Squares (FEOLS) with Driscoll and Kraay standard error estimation techniques. Our findings are robust with alternative long-run panel specifications, including fully modified ordinary least squares, dynamic ordinary least squares, and canonical cointegration regressions, and show that population size, energy intensity, and financial development significantly promote consumption-based carbon dioxide emissions in SSA. The distributional effects of these factors, among other things, reveal that population size has a positive and significant effect on consumption-based CO2 emissions across the observed quantiles, with a more pronounced effect in lower consumption-based carbon dioxide emissions SSA economies. The model presented no evidence to validate the EKC hypothesis for Sub-Saharan Africa; policy implications of these findings were suggested.