Data and Code for "The Changing Nature of Pollution, Income, and Environmental Inequality in the United States"

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 us-ing a statistical decomposition. We decompose the overall change in the Black-WhitePM2.5 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.

本文利用与人口普查人口统计数据关联的行政税务记录，以及细颗粒物（PM2.5）暴露的高分辨率测量数据，研究过去40年间黑人群体与白人群体污染暴露差距的演变趋势。在此过程中，我们借助统计分解方法，聚焦于收入可能推动这些变化的多种路径。我们将黑人群体与白人群体PM2.5暴露差距的整体变化分解为两部分：（1）源于整体污染分布中秩保持压缩（rank-preserving compression）的成分；（2）源于污染分布内黑人和白人家庭排序变化的成分。我们发现，在此期间黑人群体与白人群体PM2.5暴露差距显著缩小，这一变化主要由秩保持变化而非位置变化（positional changes）推动。然而，近年来污染分布顶端的黑人和白人家庭相对位置已发生显著变化。