Health and Environment
Paper Session
Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2021 3:45 PM - 5:45 PM (EST)
- Chair: Alan Barreca, University of California-Los Angeles
Distribution of Pollution Incidence: Relocation, Community Demographics, and Environmental Performance of Toxic-Releasing Facilities in the United States
Abstract
Relocation of polluting plants has been shown to affect the re-distribution of environmental risks and employment across communities (Lee, 2001; Currie et al., 2015). More recently, Wang et al. (2018) shows that facilities emitting toxic pollutants tend to relocate into low socio status communities, where residents’ compensation demand and probability of engaging in collective action are low but willingness to trade-off health risks for jobs is high. Literature documenting the collocation between low socio status and high toxic exposure are mostly reduced-form analysis examining the direct impact of community demographics on environmental performance of facilities. Few studies have examined the specific impact of relocation on facilities’ performance and the role of community demographics on shaping this impact.This paper will investigate the causal effect of relocation on toxic emission levels of facilities and specifically answer whether relocation to low social status communities lead to emission increase. We will draw upon Wang et al. (2018)’s sample and analyze facilities reported toxic emissions to the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) during 1990 to 2011 (frac relocation 14.9%). We plan to estimate the treatment effect of relocation by constructing counterfactual emission levels of each relocated facility had they stayed in the original communities using the synthetic control method. We will then test the differentials of the treatment effects across relocations to higher versus lower socio status.
Our preliminary results show that major polluters relocating to lower income and lower voter turnout communities have a probability of 11.2% and 11.6% to increase emissions (comparing to counterfactual) while those relocating to higher income and voter turnout have 1.9% and 2.0%. To explore the mechanisms behind this difference, we plan to analyze the production scale, total production-related waste, and fraction of waste managed of the actual versus the synthetic facilities.
Residential Mobility, Brownfield Remediation and Environmental Gentrification in Chicago
Abstract
We examine whether moving behavior contributes to the correlation between race and pollution using a residential sorting model and data on neighborhood demographics in Chicago. We find that black residents are less likely to stay and thus more likely to be displaced compared with white residents in neighborhoods after brownfields are cleaned up, contributing to environmental gentrification. This provides evidence that race and pollution become increasingly correlated because of moving behavior, with people of color less likely to move toward cleaner neighborhoods. Cleaning up pollution without a policy that acknowledges residential mobility may thus fail to correct environmental injustice.Birth Weight Impacts of Animal Feeding Operations in North Carolina
Abstract
Hog farming industry has generated public concerns regarding odor and potential health effects due to airborne particulate matter and toxic gases present in hog waste lagoons. In this research, we examine the effects of hog farm facilities on infant health conditions in surrounding communities by exploring a rich, spatially explicit individual-level data on child health that is linked to detailed geographic information on hog farm operations in North Carolina.We apply a reduced form framework where we exploit the exogenous variation in daily wind direction relative to a prevailing wind direction during a woman’s gestation period. Prevailing winds are assumed to capture potential sorting effects of mothers across space. Specifically, our model controls for hog farm-specific prevailing wind direction and proximity to the nearest hog farm to account for common spatial preferences (e.g., preferences for living farther away from a hog farm or outside of the prevailing wind direction). Controlling for potential pre-determined sorting effects allows us to treat deviations from the prevailing wind directions as an exogenous source of variation that captures the effects of hog farm exposures on infant health outcomes.
Consistent with a growing literature on in-utero environmental exposures, we find evidence of a negative effect of in-utero exposure to hog farm facilities on infant health outcomes. The main results reveal an economically and statistically significant increase in the incidence of very low birth weight and in the incidence of preterm labor outcomes. Furthermore, heterogeneous effects are found across babies whose mothers sort into different neighborhoods. We further decompose the main effect by seasonal exposure and find that in-utero exposure to hog facilities during spring season has a statistically significant negative effect on infant birth outcomes, which is consistent with the timing of waste application on spray fields in the study area.
Discussant(s)
Nicolai V. Kuminoff
,
Arizona State University
Christopher Timmins
,
Duke University
Anna Alberini
,
University of Maryland
Alan Barreca
,
University of California-Los Angeles
JEL Classifications
- Q5 - Environmental Economics