The Environmental Inequality Lab is a nonpartisan research group that applies a rigorous, data-driven approach to understand how our environment shapes economic opportunity and well-being.
The lab develops novel data infrastructures, publishes frontier research in top academic journals, invests in early career researchers, and creates public-facing tools and products that help to democratize access to information and inform decision-making.
Why Environmental Inequality?
Exposure to environmental conditions—such as air quality, heat, and exposure to natural hazards—vary substantially across individuals. These differences have measurable effects on health, economic productivity, and well-being. But until recently, we’ve lacked the data to systematically and comprehensively quantify who is exposed, why exposure varies, and what the consequences are.
By combining newly available individual-level data with high-resolution information on environmental conditions, we’re able to:
Precisely characterize individual-level exposure to environmental conditions;
Track how exposure changes over time as people move across space; and
Quantify how these exposures affect outcomes like earnings, educational attainment, and health.
We are grateful to our funders:
