Three Measures of Environmental Inequality

James Boyce (), Klara Zwickl () and Michael Ash ()
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James Boyce: Department of Economics and Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Klara Zwickl: Department of Socio-Economics, Vienna University of Economics and Business, and Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Michael Ash: Department of Economics and Center for Public Policy and Administration, University of Massachusetts Amherst

No 12, Working Papers Series from Institute for New Economic Thinking

Abstract: Using data on industrial air pollution exposure in the United States, we compute three measures of environmental inequality: the Gini coefficient of exposure, the ratio of median exposure of minorities to that of non-Hispanic whites, and the ratio of median exposure of poor households to that of non-poor households. Comparing inequalities!in states and Congressional districts, we find that relative rankings by the three measures vary considerably. We conclude that different measures of environmental inequality may be appropriate for different analytical purposes.

JEL-codes: I14 Q53 Q56 R11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 46 pages
Date: 2014-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env and nep-pke
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:thk:wpaper:12

DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.2638089

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