View article

The theory relating environmental degradation and a certain level of per capita income of a country is known as Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC). This theory is based upon an environmental demand that would increase social control and government regulations as a society gets richer. However, little has been said about the variation of this theory in countries with great poverty and low level of education. The objective of this paper is to investigate if Brazilian poverty affects the EKC. We handle models involving dichotomous response variables to investigate if social and economic indicators-mainly income and educationaffect the environmental demand and consequently the EKC. Our results permit to infer that increases in education level and of some social indicators can generate higher probabilities of changes on individual demand for environmental goods and services. These results can be disaggregated into three interesting findings: i) the Brazilian social problems-represented by low levels of education and of income–has affected demand for environmental goods and services and, consequently, the EKC; ii) the direct relationship between poverty and environmental degradation, as some international institutions have tried to stand out, does not seem to be so consistent; investments on education and on some basic services would increase demand for environmental goods and services even among the poorest sections of society; and iii) investments on social areas could guarantee an economic growth with low levels of environmental degradation, generating a “tunnel” in the EKC.