British Columbia's carbon tax: Addressing gender, age, and locational impacts

This paper explores ways to design equitable carbon taxes across genders, ages, and locations in BC. This research begins to fill in the gaps in empirical knowledge about the impacts of a carbon tax on community groups beyond income-only based assessments. I begin this paper by outlining BC’s GHG emissions history, the structure of BC’s carbon tax, and a feminist approach to analyzing environmental and fiscal policies. I then outline my research, which uses multiple methods, and the results of the quantitative data analysis and expert interviews. My data analysis concludes that the carbon tax at its current rate does not disproportionately impact women or youth across urban and rural locations in BC to a significant extent. My research analyzes three policy options to recycle revenue back to households to off-set inequities. I make recommendations to improve the equity effects of BC’s carbon tax as the carbon tax rate increases.