Income Inequality and Environmental Degradation: Challenge in the Equality Hypothesis with Emphasis on Education Level

Given the increasing importance of environmental degradation and the lack of these types of studies in developing countries, this research attempts by using various hypotheses and theories have been explained in the framework of income/power inequality and environmental degradation and challenging  the equality hypothesis theoretically and rejecting this hypothesis empirically with emphasis on education role, In addition to finding real answer for the following two questions, helping to the extension of research literature and adapting appropriate environmental protection policies according to income/education level and the level of environmental degradation in developing countries. The first question is that which income group will prevail in the pollution war? And the second question is, what measures politicians should take? This research has been done based on an unbalanced panel data with fixed and random effects models during the period 2000-2013 in developing countries. The research findings indicate that Environmental Kuznets hypothesis is not rejected and the equality hypothesis is rejected. This finding can be considered as the reducing final preferences of environmental degradation of high-income countries/individuals relative to low-income. In the other words, it can be regarded as less demand of environmental degradation of the rich relative to the poor and stronger willingness to pay of environmental quality of the rich. In this case, no matter how income is distributed. Moreover, findings show that the education level decreases environmental degradation through the strengthening environmental public pressure and awareness.