Air Pollution and Health Risk Inequality

Abstract

Provision of public goods, including national defense of citizens against adversaries; assuring the microbial safety of foods and the safe use of drugs; and regulating negative externalities such as air pollution are all relatively noncontroversial roles for modern states. A more controversial proposition is that states should also intervene in regulated activities to try to promote fair, just, or equitable outcomes. For example, Fann et al. (2011) proposed to use data on spatial distributions of pollutant exposures and risks of premature mortality (or hospitalization) to identify pollution reduction policies intended to promote greater environmental justice and more efficient risk reduction. They suggest that applying a measure of inequity for income distributions – the univariate Atkinson Index (AI) – to risk distributions can identify desirable interventions that would reduce both risk and inequality in the distribution of risk.