Distributed household effects of climate policy in the United States

The net effects of various climate policies on households in the United States are assessed, with particular attention to the distribution of economic outcomes across geography, urbanity, and income groups. Climate policy has the potential to assess more costs to low-income households than high-income households (regressive) as well as more costs to rural households than metropolitan. The objective of this study was to improve the understanding of the potential for regressivity, geographic transfers, and rural-urban transfers among climate policy options and to test for ways to mitigate regressivity and unwanted transfers. Using different machine learning algorithms, I created a statistical model of the household carbon footprint (HCF) for an average household in each US Census tract. Policy outcomes were assessed by quantifying the net increase or decrease of annual household expenses (e.g.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Institute for Data, Systems, and Society

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Green, Tomas W.(Tomas Wesley)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Chris Knittel.

• Institute for Data, Systems, and Society.
• Technology and Policy Program.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/127170

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/127170