Environmental Justice and the Multigenerational Persistence of Environmental Exposure

Virtual Seminar
Washington, DC 20460
United States

Contact: Carl Pasurka, 202-566-2275 (PASURKA.CARL@EPA.GOV)

Presenter:  Neha Khanna (Department of Economics,  Binghamton University)

Description:  Although air quality in the United States has improved substantially over time, the most polluted neighborhoods from almost four decades ago still see relatively worse air quality. We examine whether and to what extent the disproportionate exposure to low environmental quality among socio-economically disadvantaged populations transmits from one generation to the next. This is important for environmental justice since in-utero and early childhood environmental exposure partly explains adulthood socioeconomic status which, in turn, determines residential choices, thus creating a multigenerational low environmental quality trap.

We use individual survey data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to create a sample of Individual – Grandparent pairs, with information on each generation’s own and family characteristics, geospatial identifiers, and census tract PM2.5 from 1981 – 2015. We link 9,023 individuals to 3,590 maternal grandmothers; 8,358 individuals to 3,356 maternal grandfathers; 7,170 individuals to 3,039 paternal grandmother and 6,746 individuals to 2,866 paternal grandfathers. Our preliminary analysis suggests that, on average, the intergenerational correlation in pollution exposure is positive and statistically significant. Nonetheless, while African American individuals continue to live in areas with significantly higher air pollution, the correlation with their grandparents’ exposure to PM2.5 is weaker than for white individuals. This is consistent with Currie et al. (2020)’s work that highly polluted areas with a larger African American population have experienced a disproportionately greater improvement in air quality over the last few decades.   

This is on-going work. Our immediate next step is to consider the rank in air quality exposure as an alternative measure to absolute PM2.5 concentration. In addition, we will also assess whether the disproportionate exposure over generations can be explained by early exposure that leads to poor adult socioeconomic outcomes and therefore results in residential sorting to neighborhoods with poorer environmental quality.

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