The Role of People versus Places in Individual Carbon Emissions

There is substantial spatial heterogeneity in household carbon emissions. I leverage movers in two decades of administrative Decennial Census and American Community Survey data to estimate place effects—the amount by which carbon emissions change for the same household living in different places—for almost 1,000 cities and roughly 61,500 neighborhoods across the United States. I estimate that place effects account for 14–23 percent of overall heterogeneity. A change in neighborhood-level place effects from 1 standard deviation above the mean to 1 below would reduce household carbon emissions from residential energy and commuting by about 40 percent. (JEL D12, D15, L94, Q41, Q54, R11, R23)