Abstract: Climate and development pathways jointly shape future living standards, but long-run scenario databases do not describe the joint distribution of income and climate damages within countries. We extend the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways data to about 3,000 subnational regions in 165 countries over 2020–2100, or more than 2.2 million observations, by combining projections of population, output and inequality with two damage functions and alternative convergence assumptions. Climate damages increase projected inequality in every pathway; under SSP5, the global Gini rises by up to 0.30 by 2100 relative to pre-damage income. Decomposing welfare growth into income growth, damages and inequality, the Sustainability scenario (SSP1) records the largest global welfare gains by 2100 across all damage configurations, as avoided damages and declining inequality more than offset its lower baseline growth. Welfare losses are most severe under Regional Rivalry (SSP3), especially for non-OECD countries. Among the five pathways examined, sustainable development delivers the highest projected welfare gains.
Author: Myrto KASIOUMI, Fabrice MURTIN, & Marc FLEURBAEY
Keywords: climate change; economic damages; inequality; Shared Socioeconomic Pathways; SSP