The Council on Food, Agricultural & Resource Economics (C-FARE) is joining forces with the Association of Environmental and Resource Economics (AERE) to host a panel titled Socioeconomic Disparities in Pollution Exposure — New Evidence and Arising Issues. The first talk will summarize some facts about which subgroups are exposed to higher or lower levels of pollution, and how exposures changed since the year 2000. Some of these facts are well known (e.g. differences with respect to race and income) but this talk would focus specifically on the age group that is believed to be most vulnerable to health effects of pollution exposure. The next two talks will summarize recent evidence on some of the mechanisms that create these disparities, but not focused specifically on seniors.

Panelists:

• Nick Kuminoff (Arizona State University): Disparities in Pollution Exposure Among Senior Citizens - Nick will summarize research on socioeconomic disparities in pollution exposure among people over age 65. He will describe differences in exposure among sub-groups of senior citizens who differ by race, Medicaid eligibility, and pre-existing chronic medical conditions that make them more vulnerable to air pollution. Some of the recent work in this area focuses on air pollution specifically, and some focuses on the overall neighborhood mortality risk associated with living in different geographic areas. 

• Lala Ma (University of Kentucky): Explaining Disparities in Pollution Exposure: The Role of Income, Preferences, and Information - People choose to live in more or less polluted areas based, in part, on their incomes, their concerns about pollution, and the information they have about spatial variation in pollution levels. Lala will draw on her research and literature reviews she has written to summarize what economists know about the importance of these underlying factors and how they vary across socioeconomic groups that differ in race and income.

• Peter Christensen (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign): Explaining Disparities in Pollution Exposure: The Role of Housing Market Discrimination - New evidence suggests that real estate agents and landlords appear to steer minority households toward more polluted neighborhoods. Peter will summarize results from his recently published papers and working papers in which he examines data from correspondence experiments and audit experiments.

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