Concentration of industrial pollution in China

ABSTRACT

We pioneer the application of the Theil index, a statistic primarily used to measure economic inequality or racial segregation, to studying the concentration of local pollutants. While most discussions are on reducing the level of pollution, our goal is to investigate the effect of China’s development strategies on the distribution of pollution. Decomposition of the index into the between-region and within-region concentrations provides a unique policy evaluation for China. We find that while the within-region and between-region imbalances of industrial output have both been reduced, the speed of diversion of pollution does not follow. There is not much between-region movement of pollution over time. Most changes are within-region.

KEYWORDS:

• Theil index
• industrial pollution
• inequality
• Chinese development

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• Q56
• R11
• D39

Acknowledgments

Wu acknowledges supports from the Liberal Arts and Social Sciences Foundation of the Ministry of Education in China under Grant number 17YJC790166. Hueng acknowledges supports from the 2016–17 US Scholar Fulbright Program.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Liberal arts and Social Sciences Foundation of the Ministry of Education in China [17YJC790166] and National Natural Science Foundation of China [71803193].