Inter-Neighborhood Migration, Race, and Environmental Hazards: Modeling Micro-Level Processes of Environmental Inequality

Kyle D. Crowder, Western Washington University
Liam Downey, University of Colorado at Boulder

This study combines individual-level data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics with neighborhood-level environmental hazard data derived from the Environmental Protection Agency and sociodemographic characteristics drawn from the U.S. census to provide a first examination of racial and ethnic differences in migration between neighborhoods with varying levels of environmental pollution. Results indicate that profound racial and ethnic differences in exposure to industrial pollution are maintained more by differences in mobility destinations than by differential effects of pollution on the decision to move. Conditional upon moving, black and Latino householders enter neighborhoods that are significantly more polluted than those accessed by whites, while other-race householders enter neighborhoods with less pollution. These differences cannot be explained by group differences in socioeconomic resources or other micro-level characteristics but are shaped, to a certain degree, by group differences in the reaction to non-white populations that tend to be concentrated in highly polluted areas.