IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/apandp/v114y2024p41-46.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

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

Author

Listed:
  • Jonathan Colmer
  • Suvy Qin
  • John Voorheis
  • Reed Walker

Abstract

This paper uses tax records linked to administrative Census data and high-resolution measures of air pollution exposure (PM2.5) to study the evolution of the Black-White pollution exposure gap since 1984. We decompose changes in the racial exposure gap into (i) rank-preserving compression of the pollution distribution and (ii) changes stemming from a reordering of Black and White households within the pollution distribution. We find a narrowing of the racial exposure gap that is overwhelmingly driven by rank-preserving changes rather than positional changes. Recently, however, the relative positions of Black and White households in the upper tail of the pollution distribution have converged.

Suggested Citation

  • 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, American Economic Association, vol. 114, pages 41-46, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:apandp:v:114:y:2024:p:41-46
    DOI: 10.1257/pandp.20241010
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pandp.20241010
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pandp.20241010.appx
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pandp.20241010.ds
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1257/pandp.20241010?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Janet Currie & John Voorheis & Reed Walker, 2023. "What Caused Racial Disparities in Particulate Exposure to Fall? New Evidence from the Clean Air Act and Satellite-Based Measures of Air Quality," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 113(1), pages 71-97, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Björn Bos & Moritz A. Drupp & Lutz Sager, 2025. "The Distributional Effects of Low Emission Zones: Who Benefits from Cleaner Air?," CESifo Working Paper Series 11739, CESifo.
    2. C. Grislain-Letremy & J. Sixou & A. Sotura, 2024. "Urban Heat Islands and Inequalities: Evidence from French Cities," Documents de Travail de l'Insee - INSEE Working Papers 2024-21, Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Coury, Michael & Falconer, Liam & La Nauze, Andrea, 2024. "Wildfire smoke and private provision of public air-quality monitoring," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    2. Hollingsworth, Alex J. & Konisky, David M. & Zirogiannis, Nikolaos, 2021. "The health consequences of excess emissions: Evidence from Texas," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    3. Ju, Heng & Tang, Yao & Zhang, Meilan, 2024. "Air Pollution's Grip: Drug Cost and Its Heterogeneity in China," MPRA Paper 121154, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Cécile Couharde & Rémi Generoso, 2024. "Assessing the Impact of National Air Quality Standards on Agricultural Land Values: Insights from Corn and Soybean Regions," Working Papers hal-04503777, HAL.
    5. Harleman, Max & Weber, Jeremy G., 2023. "Can Collective Action Institutions Outperform the State? Evidence from Treatment of Abandoned Mine Drainage," MPRA Paper 121315, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Sager, Lutz, 2025. "Global air quality inequality over 2000–2020," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).
    7. Timothy J. Halliday & Rachel Inafuku & Lester Lusher & Aureo de Paula, 2022. "VOG: Using Volcanic Eruptions to Estimate the Impact of Air Pollution on Student Learning Outcomes," Working Papers 202203, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics.
    8. Hasan, Iftekhar & Krause, Thomas & Manfredonia, Stefano & Noth, Felix, 2022. "Banking market deregulation and mortality inequality," Bank of Finland Research Discussion Papers 14/2022, Bank of Finland.
    9. Lutz Sager & Gregor Singer, 2025. "Clean Identification? The Effects of the Clean Air Act on Air Pollution, Exposure Disparities, and House Prices," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 17(1), pages 1-36, February.
    10. Kalinin, Alexey V. & Sims, Katharine R.E. & Meyer, Spencer R. & Thompson, Jonathan R., 2023. "Does land conservation raise property taxes? Evidence from New England cities and towns," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    11. Camille Salesse, 2022. "Inequality in exposure to air pollution in France: bringing pollutant cocktails into the picture," CEE-M Working Papers hal-03882438, CEE-M, Universtiy of Montpellier, CNRS, INRA, Montpellier SupAgro.
    12. Joshua S. Graff Zivin & Gregor Singer, 2022. "Disparities in Pollution Capitalization Rates: The Role of Direct and Systemic Discrimination," NBER Working Papers 30814, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Duque, Valentina & Gilraine, Michael, 2022. "Coal use, air pollution, and student performance," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 213(C).
    14. Duque, Valentina & Gilraine, Michael, 2020. "Coal Use and Student Performance," Working Papers 2020-07, University of Sydney, School of Economics.
    15. Hernandez-Cortes, Danae & Meng, Kyle C., 2023. "Do environmental markets cause environmental injustice? Evidence from California’s carbon market," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 217(C).
    16. Ferro, Simone & Palma, Alessandro & Serra, Chiara & Stafoggia, Massimo, 2024. "Beyond birth: The medium-term health impact of prenatal exposure to air pollution," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    17. Michael Gilraine & Angela Zheng, 2022. "Air Pollution and Student Performance in the U.S," Department of Economics Working Papers 2022-02, McMaster University.
    18. repec:osf:osfxxx:pcva2_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Jacobsen, Grant D., 2024. "Race, ethnicity, and the distribution of energy efficiency incentives," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).
    20. Carolyn Fischer & Grant D. Jacobsen, 2021. "The Green New Deal And The Future Of Carbon Pricing," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(3), pages 988-995, June.
    21. Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham & Karen Jiang & Zirui Song & Jacob Wallace, 2022. "Measuring Changes in Disparity Gaps: An Application to Health Insurance," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 112, pages 356-360, May.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • Q51 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Valuation of Environmental Effects
    • Q53 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Air Pollution; Water Pollution; Noise; Hazardous Waste; Solid Waste; Recycling

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:apandp:v:114:y:2024:p:41-46. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.