Author: Rachel A. Bouvier
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Economic development
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Author: Klara Zwickl
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 141

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Rising income and wealth disparities are increasingly viewed as serious economic and social problems, but what are the environmental consequences of an unequal distribution of income and wealth? Are low income neighborhoods disproportionately negatively affected by pollution exposure, and does economic inequality thus manifest itself in environmental inequality? Are poor or unequal communities less successful in collectively organizing local environmental improvements and does inequality thus increase pollution exposure for all residents? This dissertation provides some empirical evidence on these questions. Chapter 1 analyzes regional variations in environmental disparities in US cities. Using geographic micro-data from EPA's Risk Screening Environmental Indicators on industrial air pollution exposure and socio-economic data from the US Census at the blockgroup-level, we find strong empirical evidence for environmental disparities by income and race/ethnicity in US cities. However, we also find some striking regional variations in the magnitude in cities across the country. A finding that stands out across regions is that race and ethnicity are stronger predictors for air pollution exposure in the poorer half of neighborhoods in US cities. Chapter 2 investigates if neighborhood inequality affects the neighborhood's organizing capacities for local environmental improvements, using census tract-level data on industrial air pollution from EPA's Risk Screening Environmental Indicators and income and demographic variables from the American Community Survey and EPA's Smart Location Database. Estimating a spatial model of pollution exposure, we find evidence that overall neighborhood inequality - as measured by the ratio between the fourth and the second income quintile or the neighborhood Gini coefficient - increases local exposure, whereas a concentration of top incomes reduces local exposure. Chapter 3 analyzes the socio-demographic correlates of proximity to fracking wells in five US states. The geocoded fracking well data were merged with blockgroup-level socio-economic variables from the American Community Survey and the Smart Location database; the socio-economic characteristics of neighborhoods with increased proximity to fracking activity were compared. I find that racial and ethnic minorities disproportionately live near fracking wells, and that educational attainments decline with proximity to fracking activity. However, there are substantial regional variations in these patterns.

Author: Andrew Silva
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Author: Jang Youn Lee
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Author: Gustavo Nicolas Paez Salamanca
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Author: Alicia Cavanaugh
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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"Income inequality has increased significantly in more than three quarters of OECD countries over the last few decades (OECD, 2011). This rise in inequality has been particularly pronounced in the United States, and especially so across urban areas where the average metropolitan total income Gini coefficient rose from .45 to .52 over the 1980 to 2010 period. During this time, the increasingly uneven distribution of income reflects the pulling away of high-income earners with the top decile share of income rising from 35% to nearly 50%. Such an increase in inequality has far-reaching effects, undermining political, economic, social and environmental stability. The processes that drive inequality, working simultaneously at the global and local scales, take place in and shape the environment. This thesis examines trends in metropolitan income inequality in the United States and its relationship to environmental inequality by asking two overarching questions: 1) how is income inequality distributed across metropolitan areas in the US and how have these patterns changed over time? and (2) how is metropolitan income inequality related to environmental inequality in the US? The systematic review (Chapter 2) shows that as income inequality has grown, there has been a commensurate growth in the literature, especially since the mid- to late-1990s. Researchers from a multitude of disciplines have sought to further our understanding of income inequality, examining both the (i) causes of and (ii) consequences of rising inequality from a variety of perspectives. Indeed, the review finds that one of the hallmarks of the literature is a growing trend towards interdisciplinary and multidimensional approaches to the study of inequality as roughly half of the top journals publishing work on both the causes and consequences of inequality cut across traditional disciplinary boundaries. Findings also suggest there is a need for a better understanding of the dynamics of inequality at the metropolitan level.To shed light on these dynamics, this thesis uses the Census Bureau’s Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) to build a unique large-scale comparative dataset for 226 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) in the US (Chapter 3). In terms of our understanding of the drivers of metropolitan inequality, modeling results suggest that education has the strongest impact on rising inequality; metropolitan areas with greater educational dispersion typically have higher levels of inequality, while increasing educational differences within metropolitan areas drive internal growth in inequality. Racial segregation is also linked to increasing inter-metropolitan inequality; places with greater levels of segregation are more unequal, and deepening segregation within metropolitan areas increases inequality. On the consequences side, much of the literature has focused its efforts on understanding the health outcomes of inequality. Much less attention has been paid to the potential environmental outcomes of higher inequality, particularly from an inter-metropolitan comparative perspective. To this effect, the panel model results presented in Chapter 4 are mixed. On the one hand, the examination of the long-run inequality-environment connection highlights a positive relationship between environmental degradation and inequality across US cities. On the other hand, short-term models show that while an increase in metropolitan inequality is associated with decreasing degradation, deepening segregation continues to be linked with increasing levels of pollution. These cross-city results lend further support to existing state-level and intra-metropolitan case study findings in the US. Future research should work toward obtaining better quality environmental degradation and pollution data at the metropolitan level in order to better parse out the connections between rising inequality and environmental outcomes"--

Author: Adolfo Figueroa
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031210727
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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This book contains another set of essays dealing with the fundamental economic problems of our time: inequality, environment degradation, and social disorder, which are analyzed in light of the unified theory of capitalism. This theory is a scientific endeavor that seeks to explain the capitalist system taken by parts and then taken as a whole, as a unified theory. By parts, the theory analyzes the First World and the Third World and also the short run, long run, and very long run economic processes, showing why and how economic growth has led to a new epoch, with ecological equilibrium disruption, known as the Anthropocene Age. The empirical predictions of the theory are proven to be consistent with the available facts. Therefore, the theory can be accepted as a good representation of the real-world capitalism; moreover, its derived causality relations become inputs for the debate on the needed science-based policies for the new age. Indeed, this book proposes structural policies to change the way capitalism operates, through changes in its basic institutions, mainly the electoral democracy, which would certainly imply a re-foundation of the capitalist system.

Author: Yu Fu
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Development economics
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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This thesis consists of three independent essays on the fields of development economics and environmental economics. The first two papers use the same theoretical model to explain different issues in developing countries. The third paper studies the effects of population growth on the Environmental Kuznets Curve provided it exists. China's internal migration plays an important role in explaining its recent economic success. The first paper constructs a model of labor migration, focusing on the role of selection effects in determining labor market outcomes, and then calibrates it to quantify the effects of China's labor market reforms on its outputs and inequality. I show that the removal of internal migration restrictions benefits the economy as a whole, while exacerbating inequality within both rural and urban areas. The second paper suggests that minimum wage policy may be beneficial for a transitional economy in which labor is migrating from rural areas to urban areas when positive moving costs occur. With a moving cost wedge a modestly binding minimum wage can cause relatively low productivity urban workers to be replaced by higher productivity rural migrants, and therefore increase aggregate output. To achieve the second best outcome, government shall fully compensate the moving costs for the marginal migrant workers who move from the rural industrial sector to the urban subsistence sector and a binding minimum wage shall be imposed on the urban workers but not the migrant workers in the urban industrial sector. The Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis postulates an inverted U-shaped relationship between economic growth and many local environmental health indicators. By using an overlapping generations (OLG) model, I focus on technological effects, where the properties of the existing pollution abatement technologies could generate the inverted U-shaped EKC and other forms of growth-pollution paths for the less advanced economies. Moreover, I examine the effects of population growth on the shape of the EKC, provided that it exists. Simulations indicate positive population growth raises the height of the EKC at every level of output per worker; thus, putting an extra burden on environment quality. Empirical evidence from China partially supports the results.

Author: Andrew Dobson
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191522384
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Fairness and Futurity: Essays on Environmental Sustainability and Social Justice brings together leading international figures in political theory and sociology, as well as representatives from the political community, to consider the normative issues at stake in the relationship between environmental sustainability and social justice. It raises important questions and sets out to provide the answers. If future generations are owed justice, what should we bequeath them? Is `sustainability' an appropriate medium for environmentalists to express their demands? Is environmental protection compatible with intra-generational justice? Is environmental sustainability a luxury when social peace has broken down? These essays emerged from three intensive seminars that involved participants in constant re-evaluations of their work, and which bought three distinct groups—environmental theorists, `mainstream' political theorists, and policy community members—into fruitful contact. In particular, the attempt to involve `mainstream' theorists in environmental questions, and to encourage environmentalists to use intellectual resources of political theory, should be highlighted.

Author: Matthew E. Kahn
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Automobiles
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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