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Does economic growth help reduce inequality of water consumption? Insight from evolution and drivers of inequality in water consumption in China

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Abstract

Achieving equality in water usage is part of the sixth goal of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. A comprehensive understanding evolution of inequality in water use and the driving factors behind the inequality can facilitate to implement equality in water consumption. In this work, the inequality index was used to measure China’s water consumption inequality from 2004 to 2018 and the decomposition technique was used to decompose the status of inequality and the evolution of inequality. The results show the inequality in its water consumption was not reduced obviously despite China’s rapid economic growth. There were 38.71% of provinces in China whose per capita water consumption was greater than the national average, mainly in the western region. For the three regions of China, the intraregional inequality was much greater than the interregional inequality. The western index was the largest and the eastern was the smallest. Among the factors that cause the inequality in water consumption, no one factor has been dominant at all times. Moreover, the effects of different factors changed over time. It is almost impossible to reduce inequality in water consumption through policy adjustment to several factors. China’s example show that economic development cannot reduce the inequality in water consumption. More targeted policies and more efforts are required to reduce the inequality in water consumption.

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Data availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the editor and these anonymous reviewers for their helpful and constructive comments that greatly contributed to improving the final version of the manuscript. The author thanks the following funds for their support: National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 71874203), Humanities and Social Science Fund of Ministry of Education of China (Grant No.18YJA790081), Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province, China (Grant No. ZR2018MG016).

Funding

This work is funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 71874203), the Humanities and Social Science Fund of Ministry of Education of China (Grant No.18YJA790081), and the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province, China (Grant No. ZR2018MG016).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economics and Management, China University of Petroleum (East China), Qingdao, 266580, People’s Republic of China

    Qiang Wang & Xiaowei Wang

  2. Institute for Energy Economics and Policy, China University of Petroleum (East China), Qingdao, 266580, People’s Republic of China

    Qiang Wang & Xiaowei Wang

Authors
  1. Qiang Wang
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  2. Xiaowei Wang
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Contributions

Qiang Wang: conceptualization; methodology; software; data curation; writing—original draft preparation; supervision; writing—reviewing and editing. Xiaowei Wang: methodology; software; investigation; writing—original draft; writing—reviewing and editing.

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Correspondence to Qiang Wang.

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Responsible Editor: Baojing Gu

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Highlights

• Evaluate the water consumption inequality in China and 31 provinces in 2004–2018.

• A new decomposition Theil inequality index model is constructed based on LMDI.

• The status of inequality of per capita water consumption is decomposed into six indicators.

• The water consumption inequality in three regions of China is compared.

• Analyze the contribution of intraregional and interregional inequality to overall inequality.

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Wang, Q., Wang, X. Does economic growth help reduce inequality of water consumption? Insight from evolution and drivers of inequality in water consumption in China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 37338–37353 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-13243-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-13243-8

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