ASSESSING ENVIRONMENTAL INEQUALITY: HOW THE CONCLUSIONS WE DRAW VARY ACCORDING TO THE DEFINITIONS WE EMPLOY

ABSTRACT

This article demonstrates that the conclusions environmental inequality researchers draw vary according to the definitions of environmental inequality they employ and that researchers can use a single set of results to test for the existence of multiple forms of environmental inequality. In order to illustrate these points, I set forth five definitions of environmental inequality, list the kinds of evidence we must obtain in order to determine whether each form of environmental inequality exists, and show how conclusions drawn from several recent environmental inequality studies vary depending on the definition of environmental inequality we employ. My goal is not to show that any one definition is superior to the others; nor am I trying to generalize from the studies reported here to a broader set of research findings. Instead, my goal is to a) show that we can use a single set of results to address a variety of environmental justice concerns and b) demonstrate that our interpretations of environmental inequality research have been too narrowly focused on one set of environmental inequality outcomes.

Notes

¹Two points: first, as I discuss in more detail below, the evidence from recent studies can only be used to draw conclusions about the existence of four of the five forms of environmental inequality defined in this article. Second, although I focus on quantitative environmental inequality research in this article, I agree wholeheartedly with Pastor, Sadd, and Hipp (2001) and Pulido (1996) that qualitative environmental inequality research is critically important and that qualitative and quantitative environmental inequality research complement each other (also see Downey 1998).

²Research indicates, for example, that poor people and minorities receive lower quality health care and lower levels of health care than do whites and wealthier individuals (Blendon et al. 1989; Williams and Collins 1995; Woolhandler et al. 1985). Research also indicates that poor people and minorities may be less likely than whites and wealthier individuals to possess “health-enhancing personality characteristics” such as “self-esteem and perceptions of mastery or control” and more likely than whites and wealthier individuals to possess health-degrading personality characteristics such as “anger or hostility, feelings of helplessness and hopelessness, and repression or denial of emotions” (Williams and Collins 1995, p.375). This suggests that equal proximity and exposure to pollution may harm the health of poor people and people of color more than they harm the health of whites and wealthier individuals.

³Although activists and researchers have argued that environmental hazard presence is likely to be associated with declining neighborhood incomes, increased neighborhood poverty, increased minority presence, and increased residential segregation, few studies have investigated these claims and those that have done so have produced contradictory findings (Downey 2005; Been 1994; Oakes et al. 1996; Pastor et al. 2001; Pulido 2000; Yandle and Burton 1996).

⁴Disparate proximity is viewed here as an indicator of environmental inequality rather than a form of environmental inequality in its own right.

⁵Strictly speaking, of course, a negative correlation between subordinate group presence and hazard presence suggests that dominant groups may live in closer proximity to some set of environmental hazards than we would expect if dominant group members were randomly distributed across residential space.

⁶To my knowledge, Anderton et al. (1994a) never argued that their results provided proof that race-based environmental inequality is not a serious social problem. But as cited in the main text, others have used their study to make this argument.

*Data from time of siting.

**1990 data.

(a) Minority, (b) Black, (c) Hispanic, (d) Poverty, (e) Income

*Hazardous Waste Facilities.

**Toxic Release Inventory Facilities.

***Superfund Sites.

^†Figure 3 in Pastor et al. (2002) presents a different pattern of results than those summarized here. However, it is not clear if the results in Figure 3 are statistically significant. So they are not summarized here.

^††Data from time of siting.

^†††1990 data.

⁷The cross-sectional and longitudinal data employed in most environmental inequality research cannot be used to directly test the racist intent hypothesis because the datasets used by most environmental inequality researchers do not contain information on why firms decided to site specific hazards in specific locations. Thus, researchers are generally forced to infer the possibility of racially discriminatory intent from the current distribution of hazards or from the characteristics of neighborhoods at the time of siting (Been 1994). If siting distributions or current hazard distributions are racially inequitable, researchers argue that intentionally racist siting decisions may have been made. If, on the other hand, these distributions are found to be racially equitable, researchers conclude that discriminatory intent did not guide siting practices. Although data about the characteristics of neighborhoods at the time of siting are preferable to data on current hazard distributions, neither type of data allows us to directly test the racist intent hypothesis. Thus, Table 1, panel 3 uses the term “possible” rather than “yes” when the data are consistent with the possibility that racially discriminatory intent guided the siting process.

⁸This is not true for all adverse effects. Mohai (1995), for example, cites evidence that property values are negatively affected within a 2.5 mile radius of solid waste landfills.