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

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Janet Currie, Princeton University; John Voorheis, United States Census Bureau; Reed Walker, University of California-Berkeley

Version: View help for Version V1

Name	File Type	Size	Last Modified
replicationFiles			12/20/2022 01:31:AM

Project Citation:

Currie, Janet, Voorheis, John , and Walker, Reed. Data and Code for: What Caused Racial Disparities in Particulate Exposure to Fall? New Evidence from the Clean Air Act and Satellite-Based Measures of Air Quality. Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2023. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2023-01-17. https://doi.org/10.3886/E156821V1

Project Description

Summary:

Racial differences in exposure to ambient air pollution have declined significantly in the United States over the past 20 years. This project links administrative Census microdata to newly available, spatially contin- uous high resolution measures of ambient particulate pollution (PM2.5) to examine the underlying causes and consequences of differences in Black-White pollution exposures. We begin by decomposing differences in pollution exposure into components explained by observable population characteristics (e.g., income) versus those that remain unexplained. We then use quantile regression methods to show that a significant portion of the “unexplained” convergence in Black-White pollution exposure can be attributed to differ- ential impacts of the Clean Air Act (CAA) in African American and non-Hispanic White communities. Areas with larger Black populations saw greater CAA-related declines in PM2.5 exposure. We show that the CAA has been the single largest contributor to racial convergence in PM2.5 pollution exposure in the U.S. since 2000 accounting for over 60 percent of the reduction.

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: air pollution; environmental inequality

JEL Classification:
      D63 Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
      Q50 Environmental Economics: General
      Q53 Air Pollution; Water Pollution; Noise; Hazardous Waste; Solid Waste; Recycling

Geographic Coverage: United States

Time Period(s): 2000 – 2015 (2000-2015)

Universe: Sample of individuals and households in the United States

Data Type(s): program source code

Methodology

Unit(s) of Observation: Individual or household

Related Publications

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Published Versions

V1 [2023-01-17]

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