Scholars interested in understanding the unequal exposure to environmental harms by race and class have often relied on urban sociological theory. Specifically, the argument that the outmigration of middle-class Whites and African Americans from America’s industrial areas, as well as the decline in manufacturing employment in these communities, concentrated minority poverty around industrial sites. These nested, community-level, processes have not yet been measured as such in the environmental inequality literature. This article addresses this limitation by using spatial measures of poverty segregation between and within racial groups. Multilevel models are presented that examine how the density of industrial facilities is related to the economic health of a host-tract, the broader economic context of the county, and the level of poverty segregation (both within and between racial/ethnic groups). Results demonstrate that there is a spatial separation of the economic benefits and environmental harms across the United States, a pattern that has remained consistent over time.

有兴趣了解种族和阶级对环境危害的不平等暴露的学者经常依赖于城市社会学理论。具体而言，有关中产阶级白人和非裔美国人从美国工业区移民以及这些社区制造业就业人数下降的论点使少数族裔贫困集中在工业区附近。这些嵌套的社区级过程尚未在环境不平等文献中进行过测量。本文通过使用种族群体之间和内部种族隔离的空间度量方法来解决此限制。提出了多层次的模型，用于检验工业设施的密度与所在地区的经济健康状况，该县的更广泛的经济背景之间的关系，以及贫困隔离的程度（在种族/族裔群体之内和之间）。结果表明，美国各地的经济利益和环境危害在空间上是分开的，这种模式随着时间的推移一直保持一致。