Impact of Poverty and Population Increase on Environmental Degradation: A Comparative Study of Pakistan and India

This study is devoted to elucidating the impact of poverty and population increase on air pollution (CO2-emission) in the two most populous countries of South Asia i.e. Pakistan and India. Annual time series data for the period of 1990-2018 are used to examine the said impact. To estimate the desired impact Autoregressive Distributed Lags (ARDL) technique is used. It is observed that CO2 emission is significantly determined by population increase and poverty in case of India. In the case of Pakistan population increase significantly affect CO2 emission in both the short run and long run, while poverty don not contributed significantly in the long run. Industrial production if found positive and statistically significant in both the runs. Stability of the model and other diagnostic tests are also employed not serious econometric problems are repowered. It is suggested on the bases of results that serious steps should be taken to reduce environmental pollution by reducing population increase and poverty. Industrial production also contributed to air pollution therefore industrial policies are also needed to be employed to reduce Air pollution.