The carbon intensity of well-being and presidential politics in the United States, 1960–2023

The carbon intensity of well-being (CIWB) captures the amount of stress that societies place on the environment to produce human well-being. This Brief Report provides a description of the CIWB in the United States from 1960 to 2023 and analyzes how it changed during Republican and Democratic presidencies. Results show that after rising in the 1960s, the CIWB in the United States has declined, though the rate of decline varies. Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) models show that transitions to Democratic administrations are associated with around a 1% decline in CIWB after one year. This effect is small but statistically significant, suggesting that the American president does have an influence on CIWB but that more work is needed by presidential administrations to reduce CIWB in the long run.