IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/juecon/v144y2024ics0094119024000779.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Toxic Metal Injustice? Socioeconomic status at birth and exposure to airborne pollution

Author

Listed:
  • Erixson, Oscar
  • Granath, Jakob
  • Hu, Xiao
  • Öhman, Mattias

Abstract

We combine administrative data on socioeconomic status (SES) with high-resolution data on residential locations, local pollution levels, industrial facilities, as well as land cover information to investigate whether exposure to airborne toxic metals (arsenic, lead, and mercury) is unequally distributed within the population of newborn children in Sweden. We find that the spatial distribution of SES among newborns weakly correlates with the distribution of toxic metals at the national level and in the largest cities, indicating negligible sorting in this dimension. If anything, high SES children are disproportionately more exposed, residing in urban areas with higher levels of traffic and industrial activities. This leads us to conclude that environmental injustice regarding airborne arsenic, lead, and mercury exposure is not a major concern in Sweden.

Suggested Citation

  • Erixson, Oscar & Granath, Jakob & Hu, Xiao & Öhman, Mattias, 2024. "Toxic Metal Injustice? Socioeconomic status at birth and exposure to airborne pollution," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:juecon:v:144:y:2024:i:c:s0094119024000779
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jue.2024.103707
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094119024000779
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jue.2024.103707?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Toxic metals; Environmental justice; Socioeconomic status; Residential sorting;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I14 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Inequality
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • I24 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Inequality

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:juecon:v:144:y:2024:i:c:s0094119024000779. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622905 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.