An empirical assessment of U.S. state-level immigration and environmental emissions

Jay Squalli

Ecological Economics, 2010, vol. 69, issue 5, 1170-1175

Abstract: This paper uses U.S. state-level data for CO, NO2, SO2, and PM10 emissions and a STIRPAT-inspired model to provide empirical evidence discrediting, at least in part, the restrictionist perspective on the immigration-environment relationship. The paper finds that U.S. states with a larger share of foreign-born residents are associated with lower NO2 and SO2 emissions. While these results do not necessarily imply that immigrants mitigate environmental emissions, they emphasize the importance of addressing the relationship between immigration and the environment based on an objective assessment of facts. Hence, it is this paper's contention that it is empirically unjustifiable to call for restrictions on immigration on environmental grounds.

Keywords: Emissions; Environment; Immigration; STIRPAT; IPAT (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921-8009(10)00026-1
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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:eee:ecolec:v:69:y:2010:i:5:p:1170-1175

Access Statistics for this article

Ecological Economics is currently edited by C. J. Cleveland

More articles in Ecological Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().