Table 1: Descriptive Statistics for Study Sample and Excluded Respondents (Community, Crime, and Health
Survey)
A growing body of literature examines whether the poor, working class, and people of color are
disproportionately likely to live in environmentally hazardous neighborhoods, with mixed results. Some
researchers suggest that methodological weaknesses are to blame for inconsistent findings. For example,
most studies rely solely on “community”-level data (eg. county, block level), examining the association
between aggregate levels of environmental hazards and population characteristics and then concluding
that individuals with certain characteristics are more likely to live near environmental pollutants. Most
studies focus exclusively on urban areas to the exclusion of more rural areas, leading to a lack of
understanding of whether environmental inequality exists in rural areas. Finally most studies rely on one
measure of environmental hazards, while evidence suggests that different measures lead to different
conclusions.
In order to address these concerns, we test environmental inequality hypotheses in the entire state
of Illinois. We use individual-level data from the 1995 Community, Crime, and Health Survey (Ross and
Britt, co-PIs) linked with 1990 U.S. Census data and 1995 Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) data. Using
these data we are able to test whether individual characteristics are related to hazard exposure, as
population characteristics have been in many previous studies. We are also able to examine interactions
between individual and community-level characteristics. We examine whether patterns of environmental
inequality that exist in urban areas hold up in suburban and rural areas of the state. Finally, we test these
hypotheses using three measures of exposure B total facilities, distance to facilities, and pounds of waste.
Literature Review
Many studies have found that race – particularly the percentage of African Americans in a
population – is associated with the presence of environmental hazards (US GAO 1983; Bullard 1983;
CRJ/UCC 1987; Mohai and Bryant 1992; Burke 1993; Zimmerman 1993; Been 1994; Krieg 1995;
Pollock and Vittras 1995; Glickman and Hersh 1995; Sadd et al. 1996). Hockman and Morris (1998)
Convention