Date of Award
Spring 2026
Language
English
Embargo Period
5-10-2026
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
College/School/Department
Department of Educational Policy and Leadership
Program
Educational Policy and Leadership
First Advisor
Aaron Benavot
Committee Members
Aaron Benavot, Kathryn S. Schiller, Evan Schofer
Keywords
Green Growth, Carbon Emissions, Environmental Sociology, Education
Subject Categories
Education Economics | International and Comparative Education
Abstract
The question of whether education promotes economic growth has long been a central topic in development research, and education has been linked to economic outcomes through macro-level pathways such as human capital accumulation, productivity growth, and technological diffusion. More recently, this discussion has expanded beyond economic growth to consider whether education contributes to environmentally sustainable development, particularly green growth. Green growth emphasizes the possibility of sustaining economic expansion while reducing environmental pressure (OECD, 2011; UNEP, 2011), and this study therefore examines how education is related to green growth and carbon emissions at the macro level.
At the macro level, existing empirical studies can generally be divided into two approaches. One examines the direct relationship between education and green growth or carbon emissions, while the other analyzes how these relationships vary across institutional conditions. Studies examining the direct effects of education remain relatively limited and often do not fully incorporate institutional conditions such as democracy and international environmental agreements. In contrast, conditional approaches typically include education as one of several explanatory variables within broader institutional contexts, limiting the focus on education itself.
Both approaches also tend to rely on aggregate measures of education or focus on a single educational level, making it difficult to capture differences across educational levels. Although primary, lower secondary, upper secondary, and tertiary education may be associated with green growth and carbon emissions in different ways, these level-specific differences have received limited attention. In addition, most studies focus on short-term changes, with relatively limited attention to how the effects of education evolve over time.
Building on these limitations, this study examines whether the relationship between education, green growth, and carbon emissions varies across educational levels, institutional conditions, and time. Using a country–year panel dataset covering 1990–2022, the study examines CO₂ intensity as an indicator of green growth and environmental efficiency, while CO₂ emissions per capita and consumption-based CO₂ emissions are analyzed as emissions outcomes. Education is measured both as mean years of schooling and by educational level, including primary completion, lower secondary completion, upper secondary completion, and tertiary gross enrollment. The study further examines whether the environmental effects of education vary according to democracy and participation in international environmental agreements.
The findings show that mean years of schooling is associated with improvements across all three indicators, with the strongest relationship observed for CO₂ intensity. A one-year increase in mean years of schooling is associated with an estimated long-run reduction of approximately 18% in CO₂ intensity, compared to approximately 13% in CO₂ emissions per capita and 7% in consumption-based CO₂ emissions. Educational levels also exhibit heterogeneous patterns. Primary and lower secondary education are generally associated with increases in carbon emissions, while these positive relationships weaken at higher educational levels. In contrast, tertiary gross enrollment demonstrates a more consistent negative relationship across all three indicators, with estimated long-run reductions of approximately 1.1% in CO₂ intensity, 0.7% in CO₂ emissions per capita, and 0.7% in consumption-based CO₂ emissions.
The findings further indicate that the environmental effects of education vary across institutional conditions. Interactions between education and democracy show that the emissions-reducing effects of mean years of schooling and tertiary education become stronger under higher levels of democracy. Similar patterns also emerge for interactions with international environmental agreements, where the relationship between education and reductions in CO₂ intensity and emissions becomes stronger in countries more deeply integrated into global environmental regimes.
The findings also indicate the effects of education are temporally distributed rather than immediate. Changes in CO₂ intensity emerge relatively earlier, while reductions in carbon emissions become more evident after a lag of approximately seven to ten years. These findings suggest that education influences green growth and carbon emissions through gradual and cumulative social and institutional processes rather than through short-term changes alone.
From a theoretical perspective, these findings are broadly consistent with ecological modernization theory. In particular, the stronger relationship between mean years of schooling, tertiary education, and reductions in CO₂ intensity suggests education may be linked to technological upgrading, efficiency improvements, and institutional capacity building (Mol et al., 2013). At the same time, the positive association between primary and secondary education, especially lower secondary education, and carbon emissions suggests that educational expansion may initially accompany increases in production, industrialization, and energy use. In addition, the moderating effects of democracy (Bromley et al., 2025; Povitkina, 2018) and international environmental agreements (Frank, 1997) are also consistent with world society perspectives emphasizing the role of institutions and global environmental regimes in the diffusion of environmental norms and institutional capacities (Meyer et al., 1997).
In conclusion, this study demonstrates that education influences green growth and carbon emissions through heterogeneous and temporally distributed pathways. The findings highlight the importance of considering educational-level differences, institutional conditions, and temporal dynamics when assessing the role of education in sustainable development.
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Ahn, Soojeong, "The Effect of Education on Green Growth and Carbon Emissions, 1990–2022" (2026). Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present). 466.
https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/etd/466