Poverty is a major determinant for pollution exposure, according to the US location choice literature. In this paper, we assess the impact of socio-economic status on location choices in the European context. Our analysis relies on an original dataset of 1194 households living in polluted and non-polluted areas in three European countries: Spain, Portugal, and France. We use instrumental variables strategies to identify the socioeconomic causes of location choices. We show that low education, wealth, and income are main reasons for living in polluted areas. We provide several robustness checks testing for the exogeneity of selected instruments. We observe that unobserved heterogeneity tends to understate the impact of socioeconomic status on residence location. Interestingly, we highlight that an important proportion of intermediate social groups (especially young couples) are living in polluted areas, probably because of place attachment and affordable housing facilities. Similarly, we show that middle-income households have lower move-out intentions than other income groups. These latter results contrast the linear vision of environmental inequalities found in the USA.

根据美国的地理位置选择文献，贫穷是污染暴露的主要决定因素。在本文中，我们评估了在欧洲背景下社会经济地位对地理位置选择的影响。我们的分析基于一个原始数据集，该数据集包含三个欧洲国家（西班牙，葡萄牙和法国）的1194户生活在受污染和无污染的地区。我们使用工具变量策略来确定位置选择的社会经济原因。我们表明，低学历，财富和收入是生活在污染地区的主要原因。我们为所选仪器的外源性提供了几种鲁棒性检查测试。我们观察到，未观察到的异质性往往低估了社会经济地位对居住地点的影响。有趣的是，我们强调指出，很可能有部分中级社会群体（尤其是年轻夫妇）生活在受污染的地区，这可能是因为他们对地方依恋和负担得起的住房设施所致。同样，我们表明中等收入家庭的搬迁意愿低于其他收入群体。后面的这些结果与美国发现的环境不平等的线性愿景形成鲜明对比。