Dodging Day Zero: Drought, Adaptation, and Inequality in Cape Town
研究了南非开普敦干旱期间，公共供水涨价导致富裕家庭减少用水并转向私人地下水，加剧了财政和分配不平等，而政策干预可缓解部分影响。
Abstract A near-catastrophic drought in Cape Town, South Africa, illustrates three implications of climate change for publicly provided utility services. First, to reduce aggregate water demand, the public utility increased prices, leading to large demand reductions by richer households. Prior to the drought, they used twice the public piped water of poorer households. At the peak of the drought, they use less. Second, some of the differential demand reduction comes from richer households substituting away from public water toward privately financed groundwater. This private adaptation both lowers the public utility’s total revenue and shifts costs onto poorer households, consequences that persist after the drought abates. Third, policy interventions mitigate some of the fiscal and distributional impacts of private adaptation. These findings highlight how climate adaptation, in the context of publicly provided goods and services, can create pecuniary and environmental externalities with equity consequences.