Global warming has increased global economic inequality.

ABSTRACT: Understanding the causes of economic inequality is critical for achieving equitable economic development. To investigate whether global warming has affected the recent evolution of inequality, we combine counterfactual historical temperature trajectories from a suite of global climate models with extensively replicated empirical evidence of the relationship between historical temperature fluctuations and economic growth. Together, these allow us to generate probabilistic country-level estimates of the influence of anthropogenic climate forcing on historical economic output. We find very high likelihood that anthropogenic climate forcing has increased economic inequality between countries. For example, per capita gross domestic product (GDP) has been reduced 17-31% at the poorest four decil

SUBMITTER: Diffenbaugh NS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6525504 | biostudies-literature | 2019 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature