title: Comparing distributions of environmental outcomes for regulatory environmental justice analysis.
abstract: Economists have long been interested in measuring distributional impacts of policy interventions. As environmental justice (EJ) emerged as an ethical issue in the 1970s, the academic literature has provided statistical analyses of the incidence and causes of various environmental outcomes as they relate to race, income, and other demographic variables. In the context of regulatory impacts, however, there is a lack of consensus regarding what information is relevant for EJ analysis, and how best to present it. This paper helps frame the discussion by suggesting a set of questions fundamental to regulatory EJ analysis, reviewing past approaches to quantifying distributional equity, and discussing the potential for adapting existing tools to the regulatory context.
authors.affiliation: National Center for Environmental Economics, US Environmental Protection Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave, NW, MC 1809T, Washington, DC 20460, USA. maguire.kelly@epa.gov
authors.forename: Kelly
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Maguire
authors.forename: Glenn
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Sheriff
mesh_terms: D058735:Environmental Policy; D012935:Social Justice; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D035862:Vulnerable Populations