This paper joins a growing body of research linking measures of the physical environment to population well-being, with a focus on neighborhood toxins. Extending a national database on the social mobility of American children growing up in over 70,000 Census tracts, we explore the association between childhood exposure to two forms of pollutants and three socioeconomic outcomes for African Americans, whites, and Latinos. We find that children who grew up in Census tracts with higher levels of traffic-related air pollution and housing-derived lead risk experienced lower adult incomes on average relative to their parents and higher likelihoods of being incarcerated as an adult or having children as teenagers, after controlling for standard socio-demographic characteristics and metropolitan-level effects. The spatial distribution of these two pollutants is surprisingly different, however, with air pollution varying mostly between regions of the country while lead risk varies dramatically between neighborhoods within the same city. Yet, each pollutant predicts the three aspects of social mobility similarly, and we show important disparities in exposure by race. Differential exposure to environmental toxins in childhood may be a contributor to racial inequality in socioeconomic outcomes among adults.

本文加入了越来越多的研究，将物理环境的测量与人口福祉联系起来，重点是邻里毒素。扩展了有关在70,000多个人口普查区中成长的美国儿童的社会流动性的国家数据库，我们探讨了儿童期两种形式的污染物与非裔美国人，白人和拉丁美洲人的三种社会经济后果之间的联系。我们发现，在人口普查区长大的儿童与交通相关的空气污染和住房衍生的铅风险较高，相对于父母而言，他们的成人平均收入较低，成年人或青少年被监禁的可能性更高，在控制了标准的社会人口统计学特征和都市水平影响之后。这两种污染物的空间分布令人惊讶地不同，然而，空气污染在该国各地区之间差异很大，而铅风险在同一城市内各社区之间差异很大。但是，每种污染物都类似地预测了社会流动的三个方面，并且我们显示出种族之间的重大差异。儿童时期环境毒素的差异暴露可能是成年人社会经济成果中种族不平等的一个原因。