What Caused Racial Disparities in Particulate Exposure to Fall? New Evidence from the Clean Air Act and Satellite-Based Measures of Air Quality

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Currie, Janet; Voorheis, John; Walker, Reed
• 署名单位: Princeton University; University of California System; University of California Berkeley
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0002-8282
• DOI: 10.1257/aer.20191957
• 发表日期: 2023
• 页码: 71-97
• 关键词: environmental justice; pollution exposure; INEQUALITY; RACE

摘要

This project links administrative census microdata to spatially continuous measures of particulate pollution (PM2.5) to first doc-ument and then decompose the key drivers of convergence in black -white pollution exposure differences. We use quantile regression to show that a significant portion of the convergence in Black-White exposure is attributable to differential impacts of the Clean Air Act (CAA) in Black and White communities. Areas with larger Black populations saw greater CAA-related declines in PM2.5. We show that the CAA can account for over 60 percent of the racial conver-gence in PM2.5 pollution exposure in the United States since 2000. (JEL J15, K32, Q51, Q53, Q58)