Environmental Inequality and Residential Sorting in Germany: A Spatial Time-Series Analysis of the Demographic Consequences of Industrial Sites

Previous research has shown that low-income households bear a higher exposure to environmental pollution than high-income households. Some scholars have argued that selective siting of industrial facilities accounts for such environmental inequality, while others have argued that those citizens who can afford to move out of polluted regions do so, and the socioeconomically disadvantaged are sorted into polluted areas. Yet empirical evidence regarding the processes of environmental inequality is not conclusive. We build on an original data set that includes annual georeferenced data of 6,570 highly polluting industrial facilities in Germany from 2008 to 2017 and validate the fluctuation in facilities with geographical land-use data. We then connect the facilities to income and demographic data for 4,455 municipalities and investigate sociodemographic changes before and after the appearance of new facilities. Spatial models are employed to measure local relative changes, and fixed-effects individual slopes estimators are used to account for selection on economic trajectories. Results provide only limited support for the selective siting thesis but show that an area's average income decreases after the appearance of new industrial facilities, thereby resonating with the selective migration hypothesis. In contrast, facility closure does not attract, or reattract, more affluent households.

Consistent Inequality across Germany? Exploring Spatial Heterogeneity in the Unequal Distribution of Air Pollution

The topic of environmental inequality, in general describing the unequal distribution of environmental pollution across different social groups, has received increasing attention in Germany and other European countries during the past decade. Though research points towards a disadvantage of minorities in Europe, conclusions regarding the extent of this disadvantage vary across studies. In this contribution, we thus examine whether the extent of environmental inequality depends on the measure of pollution and the spatial scale. We connect spatially aggregated data of the 2011 German census to geographical information of industrial facilities and pollution estimates of German-wide diffusion models. We then use spatial regression models to identify the disadvantage of foreign minorities across these measures. Furthermore, we perform geographically weighted regressions to scrutinize the role of the spatial scale and location. We find that the pollution minority gap is stronger for estimates based on industrial facilities than it is for general pollution models, though there is a consistent disadvantage of minorities within municipalities. Furthermore, we demonstrate that there is strong heterogeneity in the association between the share of foreign minorities and air pollution according to the spatial scale and location of the research area.

Does market segmentation hinder interregional CO2 flow in China? — Evidence from China’s interprovincial MRIO table

China is the key player in the globalization era and is eliminating its intra-national trade barrier. This process will affect interprovincial CO2 flows. This study recalculates interprovincial CO2 flows in China by using the latest MRIO table and applies a gravity model to assess how market segmentation affects interprovincial CO2 flows. Results show that the total volume of interprovincial embodied CO2 flow did not increase excessively from 2007 to 2012, but the pattern of embodied CO2 flow had changed a lot. Market segmentation significantly decreased the interprovincial embodied CO2 flows in China and within its sub-regions. At interregional level, market segmentation’s negative effect was significant between Central and Western China. Other variables such as geographical distance showed a significant negative impact on interprovincial embodied CO2 flow in China. On the basis of our results, we raise some relevant policies to deal with the environmental inequality caused by the decrease in market segmentation.