Purpose

The exact criteria used by state governors for choosing opportunity zones (OZs) are not publicly available. This paper aims to examine whether state governors selected the most distressed communities, or those with the highest proportions of minorities, as OZs.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper compares the distressed communities chosen as OZs in states throughout the country to an equal number of those eligible distressed communities but not selected. Moreover, this paper uses regression analysis to determine whether the poverty rate, median family income, population, percentage of population that is minority and the percentage of population that is African American are significant explanatory factors in the choice of OZs.

Findings

After describing the tax incentives for investing in OZs, this paper documents that governors did not select many of the most distressed communities, or those with high proportions of minorities, in their individual states.

Originality/value

This paper describes in some detail the way in which investors may generate tax benefits by investing in eligible property or businesses in OZs. It also examines the extent to which the degree of poverty and the percentage of the population that is minority (and African American) were key factors in the selection of OZs. It arises an issue that the chosen communities are not necessarily those most in need of more investment or those heavily populated by minorities, particularly African Americans.

中文翻译：

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机会区：税收优惠会流向最苦恼的社区吗？

目的

州长选择机会区（OZ）的确切标准尚未公开。本文旨在研究州长是否选择了受灾最严重的社区或少数族裔比例最高的社区作为OZ。

设计/方法/方法

本文将在全国各州中选择为OZ的受困社区与相等数量但未选定的合格受困社区进行了比较。此外，本文使用回归分析来确定贫困率，家庭中位数收入，人口，少数族裔人口百分比和非裔美国人人口百分比是否是选择OZ的重要解释因素。

发现

在描述了对OZ进行投资的税收优惠措施之后，本文证明了州长没有在他们自己的州中选择许多最苦恼的社区或少数族裔比例很高的社区。

创意/价值

本文更详细地描述了投资者通过在OZ中投资符合条件的房地产或企业来产生税收优惠的方式。它还研究了贫困程度和少数族裔（和非裔美国人）的人口百分比是选择OZ的关键因素的程度。这就产生了一个问题，即选定的社区不一定是最需要更多投资的社区，也不是少数族裔（尤其是非洲裔美国人）所居住的社区。