Economist's Study of Environmental Inequality Earns NSF Grant

Increasingly, environmental scientists have been joined by social scientists interested in assessing the consequences of humanity’s impact on Earth’s natural and ecological systems. Economists, for example, are applying the tools of their discipline to assess how the pollution and environmental degradation associated with economic activity affects our health, productivity and economic opportunity.

Within this new generation of environmental economists, the University of Virginia’s Jonathan Colmer is attempting to deepen our understanding of the causes — and consequences — of people’s exposure to environmental hazards ranging from air pollution and heat to hurricanes and wildfires. An associate professor in the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences’ Department of Economics, Colmer is working closely with U.S. Census Bureau researchers to build a new data infrastructure that harnesses more than two decades of individual-level data to provide a unique platform for evaluating the extent, causes and consequences of environmental inequality in the United States.

This database is the foundation for his research assessing racial and economic disparities in exposure to environmental risks and their implications for individuals’ health and economic prospects. Earlier this year, the work earned Colmer a National Science Foundation Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, one of the most coveted and prestigious honors for early-career faculty whose research and skills in classroom instruction show exceptional promise.

“It’s an honor to have been recognized by the NSF with this award. I am especially grateful for the support of my colleagues, research partners, students, and mentors who encourage and inspire me to do my best work,” Colmer said. “Our environment shapes almost every aspect of our economic lives. It’s critical that we understand who bears the burden of environmental harms, why disparities exist, and how they contribute to broader patterns of inequality.”  

Moving to a ‘person-based understanding’ 

Technological advances have improved our understanding of where environmental hazards are prevalent, but there remain large gaps in our understanding of who is exposed to environmental hazards. Most of the existing quantitative evidence focuses on disparities between neighborhoods, normally tracked within the U.S. context as Census tracts, using neighborhood-level demographic characteristics such as population shares by race and median income. What is far less understood, however, is how exposure is distributed between individuals across intersectional dimensions such as race and income.

The new data infrastructure – the Environmental Impacts Frame — built in collaboration between the U.S. Census Bureau and Colmer’s Environmental Inequality Lab combines data from surveys and administrative records to drill down to the demographic and economic characteristics of individual residents. With hyperlocal information on where people lives combined with detailed information about their race, ethnicity, and economic circumstances, Colmer can unearth new comprehensive and systematic evidence on who is exposed to a wide range of environmental hazards and how these exposures have evolved over time. By combining this data with frontier research designs, Colmer’s research will produce new foundational insights about the extent, underlying causes, and consequences of environmental inequality in the United States.

“We can move from a place-based to a person-based understanding of exposure to environmental risks,” explained Colmer, who was invited to the White House earlier this year to present his research to the Council of Economic Advisers. “This matters, especially when we want to understand how things are varying over time, because people move. If you're using aggregate data, you don't see who moves, and you don't see how exposures to environmental hazards vary across individuals within those locations. 

“What this individual-level data allows us to do is to understand exposures along what we describe as ‘intersectional margins.’” Colmer said. “For example, in one project we document that Black individuals are exposed the higher levels of air pollution than White individuals at every percentile of the national income distribution.” 

'A rising superstar’ 

Jay Shimshack, a professor of public policy and economics in UVA’s Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, has been a mentor and frequent collaborator of Colmer’s. He called working with Colmer “one of the highlights of my own research career.”

“Jonathan is richly deserving of an NSF CAREER award. It’s been so fun to see his career progress,” Shimshack said. “He is already one of the country’s foremost authorities on how environmental inequality translates into economic inequality and economic opportunity. Jonathan’s research is redefining what we know about environmental disparities and how to reduce them. 

“More generally, Jonathan is a rising superstar in environmental economics.”

With the CAREER award, Colmer will receive funding of just over $500,000 over five years to continue building the Environmental Impacts Frame and adopt research models to better understand the causal drivers of environmental disparities and their consequences for health and economic well-being.

“The College is proud to count among its faculty some of the most talented researchers and educators in higher education. Jonathan Colmer is already making a significant impact in the field of environmental economics,” said Christa Acampora, Buckner W. Clay Professor of Philosophy and Dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. “We are  pleased to learn that his important work is being supported by this CAREER Award.”

The CAREER grant funding also will support research opportunities in Colmer’s lab for economics students from underrepresented populations, including women, people of color and first-generation students.

“I’ve worked extensively with undergraduate research assistants at UVA, and I’ve been very fortunate. They’re incredibly smart and fantastic to work with," Colmer said. “With the CAREER grant, the goal is to widen the pipeline for underrepresented groups of students in the field of economics. It’s important that people from all backgrounds are represented within the profession.”