Assessing evidence of environmental inequities: A meta-analysis

Over the past decade activists, academics, and policymakers have devoted a great deal of attention to "environmental equity," or the notion that sources of potential environmental risk may be concentrated among racial and ethnic minorities and the poor. Despite these efforts, the existence and extent of environmental inequities is still the subject of intense scholarly debate. This manuscript reports the results from a meta-analysis of 49 environmental equity studies. The analysis demonstrates that while there is ubiquitous evidence of environmental inequities based upon race, existing research does not support the contention that similar inequities exist with respect to economic class. © 2005 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management