The Changing Nature of Pollution, Income, and Environmental Inequality in the United States

Jonathan Colmer (), Suvy Qin, John L. Voorheis and Reed Walker

No 32060, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper uses administrative tax records linked to Census demographic data and high-resolution measures of fine small particulate (PM2.5) exposure to study the evolution of the Black-White pollution exposure gap over the past 40 years. In doing so, we focus on the various ways in which income may have contributed to these changes using a statistical decomposition. We decompose the overall change in the Black-White PM2.5 exposure gap into (1) components that stem from rank-preserving compression in the overall pollution distribution and (2) changes that stem from a reordering of Black and White households within the pollution distribution. We find a significant narrowing of the Black-White PM2.5 exposure gap over this time period that is overwhelmingly driven by rank-preserving changes rather than positional changes. However, the relative positions of Black and White households at the upper end of the pollution distribution have meaningfully shifted in the most recent years.

JEL-codes: H0 H4 Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env, nep-his and nep-ure
Note: EEE EH PE
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published as Jonathan Colmer & Suvy Qin & John Voorheis & Reed Walker, 2024. "The Changing Nature of Pollution, Income, and Environmental Inequality in the United States," AEA Papers and Proceedings, vol 114, pages 41-46.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w32060.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

Related works:
Journal Article: The Changing Nature of Pollution, Income, and Environmental Inequality in the United States (2024)
Working Paper: The Changing Nature of Pollution, Income, and Environmental Inequality in the United States (2024)
Working Paper: The changing nature of pollution, income and environmental inequality in the United States (2024)
Working Paper: The Changing Nature of Pollution, Income, and Environmental Inequality in the United States (2024)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32060

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w32060
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().