The Economic Gains and Environmental Losses of US Consumption: A World-Systems and Input-Output Approach

Although research has shown that countries’ world-systems positions can predict levels of pollution and wealth, there has been little research looking at how consumption in the core triggers both pollution and wealth elsewhere in the world economy. In this article, we track how consumption in the United States, a core country, triggers value added and pollution throughout global commodity chains. We track these distributions for all commodities and services consumed in the United States, then for six commodity groupings, and finally for two case studies, “Motor Vehicles” and “Wearing Apparel.” Our findings show how the production of commodities for US consumption tends to reify inequalities in the world-system: Larger shares of value added (in comparison to shares of pollution) are generally prompted within the core, whereas the opposite effect tends to be experienced in the non-core. We also discuss interesting exceptions to these general trends occurring at different levels of analysis. Finally, we draw special attention to China, the elephant in the room that exhibits both core and peripheral characteristics.