Distribution of Pollution Incidence Based on Community Characteristics: Evidence from Relocating Toxic-Releasing Facilities

This paper investigates the effect of toxic-releasing facilities’ relocation on the distribution of pollution incidence across communities depending on their socio-economic characteristics. Applying synthetic control estimation to toxic emissions data of 12,823 facilities from 1990 to 2011, we examine the causal effect of facility relocation across census tracts on their emissions. We then investigate how the estimated treatment effect varies depending on the socio-economic characteristics of the relocating facilities’ destination communities compared to those of the origin communities. We find that relocation leads to an average decrease in emissions of large polluters by about 14.7%. However, large polluters moving to lower income and lower voter turnout communities reduced emissions less than those moving to communities with similar or higher level of income and voter turnout. We find no strong correlation between the racial composition of the destination community and toxic emission levels of re-locating facilities.