This article asks whether the relationship between neighborhood and household income levels and neighborhood hazard levels varies according to neighborhood and household racial composition. Using a national, census tract-level data set, the authors find that black, white, and Hispanic households with similar incomes live in neighborhoods of dissimilar environmental quality, that the association between neighborhood and household income levels and neighborhood hazard levels varies according to neighborhood and household racial composition, and that increases in neighborhood and household income levels are more strongly associated with declining hazard levels in black neighborhoods and households than in white neighborhoods and households. These findings contradict Wilson's claim that the significance of race has declined in the modern industrial period and demonstrate that environmental racial inequality is not the product of racial income inequality. In addition, these findings suggest that the impact of higher incomes on black/white proximity to environmental hazards has less to do with increases in white geographic mobility (relative to black geographic mobility) than with the ability of higher income blacks to escape the highly polluted, disorganized, and deteriorated neighborhoods to which so many low-income blacks are confined.Keywords environmental inequality; environmental justice; environmental hazards; race Since the early 1990s, a growing number of researchers have attempted to determine whether environmental inequality exists in the United States (Bowen 2002;Brulle and Pellow 2005;Downey 2007). These researchers have focused much of their attention on three questions: Are racial minorities disproportionately burdened by environmental hazards? If so, is this because of their racial status or because minorities tend to have lower incomes than whites? And is neighborhood racial composition a stronger predictor than neighborhood income levels of neighborhood environmental hazard levels?We expand on this research, and on arguments set forth by Pulido (1996Pulido ( , 2000 and Downey (1998), by arguing that rather than comparing the predictive power of race and income, it would be more fruitful to ask whether these factors interact to produce environmentally inequitable outcomes. Thus, this study addresses questions such as the following: Does the association between neighborhood income levels and neighborhood hazard levels vary according to neighborhood racial composition? Are increases in neighborhood income levels more strongly associated with declining hazard levels in minority neighborhoods or white neighborhoods? Questions such as these have not been posed in prior environmental inequality research. Thus, this article extends prior research by (a) developing a theoretical explanation for why race and income should interact to produce environmentally inequitable outcomes and (b) testing neighborhood-and household-level hypotheses derived from this explanation.In order to test these hypotheses, w...

This study compares the environmental hazard burden experienced by Blacks, Hispanics, Pacific Islanders, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and Whites in each of the 329 metropolitan areas in the continental United States, using toxicity-weighted air pollutant concentration data drawn from the Environmental Protection Agency's Risk-Screening Environmental Indicators project to determine whether and to what degree environmental inequality exists in each of these metropolitan areas. After demonstrating that environmental inequality outcomes vary widely across metropolitan areas and that each group in the analysis experiences a high pollution disadvantage in multiple metropolitan areas and a medium pollution disadvantage in many metropolitan areas, the authors test three hypotheses that make predictions about the role that residential segregation and racial income inequality play in producing environmental inequality. Using logistic regression models to test these hypotheses, the authors find that residential segregation and racial income inequality are relatively poor predictors of environmental inequality outcomes, that residential segregation can increase and decrease racial/ethnic group proximity to environmental hazards, and that the roles income inequality and residential segregation play in producing environmental inequality vary from one racial/ethnic group to another.

Objective-This study uses tract-level demographic data and toxicity-weighted air pollutant concentration estimates for the continental United States to determine whether (1) single-mother families are overrepresented in environmentally hazardous Census tracts and (2) the percentage of single-mother families in a Census tract is a significant predictor of tract-level toxic concentration estimates.Methods-After calculating tract-level toxic concentration estimates for the average female-headed family, male-headed family, and married-couple family with and without children, we use fixedeffects regression models to determine whether the percentage of single-mother families in a tract is a significant predictor of tract-level toxic concentration estimates.