The Political Economy of Environmental Taxes with an Aging Population

This paper develops a two-period overlapping-generations model with environmental externalities and uncertain lifetimes, and studies how two sources of population aging, greater longevity and a lower rate of population growth, affect the politically determined environmental tax and the quality of the environment. It is shown that greater longevity and a lower rate of population growth have entirely different effects on these factors; greater longevity has no effect on the environmental tax and has a non-positive effect on the environmental quality, whereas a lower rate of population growth has a negative effect on the tax and has a positive effect on the quality. In addition, the political decision-making on the tax leads to an inefficient allocation of capital and environmental quality.