Climate Change and Wealth Inequality: A Literature Review and Numerical Insights
Pre-print, Working paper: In this paper, we discuss the potential impacts of climate change and related policies on wealth inequality. To that end, we provide an extensive overview of the existing literature, which documents substantial impacts of climate risks on single asset types. We then present a case study to illustrate the potential magnitude of effects of climate policies on aggregate wealth and its distribution. We explore the impacts of climate-related investments, demonstrating that future climate investments could substantially shape the distribution of wealth between the private and the public. Similarly, we show that if the wealthiest global 1% were to uptake climate-related investments, their share of global wealth could significantly increase by 2050. These preliminary findings call for further research to better understand the intersection of climate change and wealth inequality.
Author(s)
Lucas Chancel, Cornelia Mohren, Philipp Bothe, Gregor Semieniuk
Date of publication
- 2024
Internal reference
- World Inequality Lab Working Papers n°2024-27
URL of the HAL notice
Version
- 1