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The changing nature of pollution, income and environmental inequality in the United States

Colmer, Jonathan, Qin, Suvy, Voorheis, John and Walker, Reed (2024) The changing nature of pollution, income and environmental inequality in the United States. CEP Discussion Papers (CEPDP1974). London School of Economics and Political Science. Centre for Economic Performance, London, UK.

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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.

Item Type: Monograph (Discussion Paper)
Official URL: https://cep.lse.ac.uk/_new/publications/discussion...
Additional Information: © 2024 The Author(s)
Divisions: Centre for Economic Performance
Subjects: H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions
JEL classification: H - Public Economics > H0 - General > H00 - General
H - Public Economics > H4 - Publicly Provided Goods > H40 - General
Q - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics > Q5 - Environmental Economics > Q50 - General
Date Deposited: 13 Feb 2025 12:33
Last Modified: 13 Feb 2025 12:33
URI: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/126758

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