The road to green development for national-level poverty-stricken counties: Does poverty alleviation help reduce carbon emissions?

Eliminating poverty and combating climate change are the twin pillars of global sustainable development. Investigating the relationship between poverty alleviation and carbon emissions reduction can provide valuable insights for global poverty governance and climate action. This study treats China's national-level poverty-stricken counties (NPC) policy as a quasi-natural experiment, adopting the difference-in-differences approach to explore the effects and influencing mechanisms of poverty alleviation policies on carbon emissions intensity using county panel data from 2010 to 2018. The empirical findings reveal that the NPC policy notably lowered local carbon emissions intensity by a remarkable 9.12%, generating environmental benefits of 20.2–121.2 billion yuan. Mechanism analysis demonstrates that the NPC policy contributed to poor counties' green development by promoting industrial upgrading and improving ecological restoration. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the carbon emissions reduction effect of the NPC policy was more pronounced in counties with large populations and rich resource endowment. Finally, the study proposes practical recommendations to advance the low-carbon effects of economic support policies.