Objective. We analyze the social and economic correlates of air pollution exposure in U.S. cities. Methods. We combine 1990 Census block group data for urbanized areas with 1998 data on toxicity‐adjusted exposure to air pollution. Using a unique data set created as a byproduct of the EPA's Risk‐Screening Environmental Indicators Model, we improve on previous studies of environmental inequality in three ways. First, where previous studies focus on the proximity to point sources and the total mass of pollutants released, our measure of toxic exposure reflects atmospheric dispersion and chemical toxicity. Second, we analyze the data at a fine level of geographic resolution. Third, we control for substantial regional variations in pollution, allowing us to identify exposure differences both within cities and between cities. Results. We find that African Americans tend to live both in more polluted cities in the United States and in more polluted neighborhoods within cities. Hispanics live in less polluted cities on average, but they live in more polluted areas within cities. We find an extremely consistent income‐pollution gradient, with lower‐income people significantly more exposed to pollution. Conclusions. Communities with higher concentrations of lower‐income people and people of color experience disproportionate exposure to environmental hazards. Our findings highlight the importance of controlling for interregional variation in pollution levels in studies of the demographic correlates of pollution.

We argue that earlier quantitative research on the relationship between heterosexual partners' earnings and time spent on housework has two basic flaws. First, it has focused on the effects of women's shares of couples' total earnings on their housework, and has not considered the simpler possibility of an association between women's absolute earnings and housework.Consequently it has relied on unsupported theoretical restrictions in the modeling. We adopt a flexible, nonparametric approach that does not impose the polynomial specifications on the data that characterize the two dominant models of the relationship between earnings and housework, the "economic exchange" and "gender display" hypotheses. Our nonparametric model allows the relationships among earnings shares, earnings, and time spent on housework to emerge from the data. A second problem with earlier studies is that they have tended to draw uniform inferences across the range of data, including regions where the data are sparse. This has led to interpretations of parametric curves that are driven by these thinly populated regions, and that may not be robust across the data. By contrast, our study explicitly assesses the reliability of results obtained in such regions. Our results provide support for an alternative model that emphasizes the importance of partners' own earnings for their housework, especially in the case of women. Women's own earnings are negatively associated with their housework hours, independently of their partners' earnings and their shares of couples' total earnings, which do not matter.2

This paper analyzes how racial and ethnic disparities in exposure to industrial air toxics in U.S. cities vary with neighborhood income, and how these disparities vary regionally across the country. Exposure is estimated at the census block-group level using geographic microdata from the Risk-Screening Environmental Indicators of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). We find that racial and ethnic disparities in pollution exposure are strongest among neighborhoods with median incomes below $25,000, while income-based disparities are stronger among neighborhoods with median incomes above that level. We also find considerable differences in the patterns of disparity across the ten EPA regions. In the two regions with the highest median exposure (the Midwest and South Central regions), for example, African-Americans and Hispanics face significantly higher exposures than whites, whereas in the region with the next highest exposure (the Mid-Atlantic), the reverse is true. We show that the latter result is attributable to intercity variationsminorities tend to live in the less polluted cities in the region -rather than to within-city variations.

This study presents alternative measures of environmental inequality in the 50 U.S. states for exposure to industrial air pollution. We examine three methodological issues. First, to what extent are environmental inequality measures sensitive to spatial scale and population weighting? Second, how do sensitivities to different segments of the overall distribution affect rankings by these measures? Third, how do vertical and horizontal (inter-group) inequality measures relate to each other? We find substantive differences in rankings by different measures and conclude that no single indicator is sufficient for addressing the entire range of equity concerns that are relevant to environmental policy; instead multiple measures are needed.

Employers' health insurance coverage for legal spouses places unmarried couples at a disadvantage for obtaining coverage. Data from the Current Population Survey confirm that people with same-sex or different-sex unmarried partners are two to three times more likely to be uninsured than married people, even after controlling for factors influencing coverage. Universal partner coverage would cut that uninsured rate by as much as 50%. Employers offering domestic partner benefits would see a small enrollment increase: 0.1%-0.3% for gay and lesbian partners and 1.3%-1.8% for heterosexual partners. We find no evidence of adverse selection. (JEL J32, J38, J71)