The Social Lifecycle Impacts of Power Plant Siting in the Historical United States

Karen Clay (), Danae Hernandez-Cortes, Akshaya Jha (), Joshua Lewis (), Noah Miller () and Edson Severnini ()
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Karen Clay: Carnegie Mellon University
Danae Hernandez-Cortes: Arizona State University
Akshaya Jha: Carnegie Mellon University
Joshua Lewis: University of Montreal
Noah Miller: University of Southern California
Edson Severnini: Boston College

No 18052, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper examines the relative contributions of siting decisions and post-siting demographic shifts to current disparities in exposure to polluting fossil-fuel plants in the United States. Our analysis leverages newly digitized data on power plant siting and operations from 1900-2020, combined with spatially resolved demographics and population data from the U.S Census from 1870-2020. We find little evidence that fossil-fuel plants were disproportionately sited in counties with higher Black population shares on average. However, event study estimates indicate that Black population share grows in the decades after the first fossil-fuel plant is built in a county, with average increases in Black population share of 4 percentage points in the 50-70 years after first siting. These long-run demographic shifts are driven by counties that first hosted a fossil-fuel plant between 1900-1949. We close by exploring how these long-run demographic shifts were shaped by the Great Migration, differential sorting in response to pollution, and other factors. Our findings highlight that the equity implications of siting long-lived infrastructure can differ dramatically depending on the time span considered.

Keywords: environmental justice; fossil-fuel power plants; infrastructure siting; demographic shifts (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N52 N92 Q40 Q52 Q53 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
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