How closely and in what way is the amount of money a person spends correlated with her carbon footprint?

Luxury services and goods may have only a modest carbon footprint increase with a dramatic price increase.  Many entertainment goods have close to zero marginal increase in carbon footprint.  Some status goods actually decrease long term carbon footprint.  However large houses, and large physical luxury goods significantly increase carbon footprint.  Also private travel (ie private jet) has enormous carbon footprint, and even regular flight travel is high carbon.  It really depends on the person and transition from which group to which group.

Energy consumption (carbon footprint) and income level are very much correlated. Just like the world's total measurable wealth, energy use (including the embodied energy of consumer goods) is concentrated at the top, and stratified everywhere in between along lines of class, income level, and yes, race.   The good news is that improvements in energy efficiency has helped many advanced economies reduce their "greenhouse gas intensity" - the ratio of emissions to GDP- which means that (hallelujah!) the US and Europe (and others) are actually making strides in decoupling their development with nonrenewable/dirty energy sources. There is much reason for optimism. Here is a wonderous tool designed and compiled by National Geographic that looks at this topic from various angles, I hope others will find it as interesting as I did. http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/energy/great-energy-challenge/global-footprints/ The bad new is, the economies of today's rapidly developing countries are very much dependent on what resources are cheapest and easiest to convert to fuel (oil and especially coal are cheap to produce domestically)- and they are emitting greenhouse gases alarming and increasing rates. BRIC nations, Indonesia, and South Africa (un/surprisingly?) are the biggest gross emitters. But again, I'm a fan of optimism and clean technology. Every day more people are thinking of sustainable, ecologically minded solutions to alleviate these problems in some faculty. Think globally, act locally =)

Price levels are also highly important here. The largest expenses for the average person: Housing, Domestic workers, Transportation, Entertainment, Hobbies An apartment powered by solar panels will have the same 'carbon footprint' as an apartment powered by solar panels, everything else equal, regardless of actual price of apartment. Hired domestic workers are not eco friendly. They're going to need to get to your place (and probably don't care nearly as much for the environment as you do), especially for landscapers, go do your work, and then get to the next area. Similarly, paying money for something that requires travel is going to have a carbon footprint. The exception to this is that if they are dedicated hired help, it may not have as high of a CF than the average worker because of the lack of need to travel. Transportation has a high energy requirement, considering the physical work it takes to move a large object at high velocity in a non vacuum. Idling a combustion engine also is bad. Clothes -- the CF rises significantly slower than the prices does. Constantly going shopping, however, has a large CF. Entertainment -- looking solely at the entertainment, the CF here is marginal. Hobbies -- some hobbies have marginal CF. Some of them have huge CF (motor driven boats; horses) The most environmentally damaging thing we do is transporting ourselves in oversized metal cages at high speeds, especially making unnecessary trips. The second most environmentally damaging thing is buying things that we waver on and then going back to return them.