Project 1
Determining the relationship between Pollution, Poverty, Race, and Infant Mortality - Victor Bogin
I conducted an in-depth analysis exploring the relationships among ambient air pollution, poverty rates, racial composition, and infant mortality across U.S. counties. Using county-level data from the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), I performed regression analyses to investigate how pollution levels are associated with demographic and health outcomes.
For poverty, I found that in 2000, higher maximum pollution levels (measured via Air Quality Index) were significantly correlated with higher poverty rates—about 5 %–20 % of the population living in poverty were in zones with AQI between 50 and 250. However, when I repeated the analysis for 2020 (maximum pollution) and for median pollution in both years, I did not observe significant correlations.
For racial composition, in 2000 I observed a positive coefficient (~36.48) when regressing pollution on the share of Black residents and a negative coefficient (~–24.55) on the share of White residents, suggesting that counties with higher Black population shares faced worse air quality, and those with higher White population shares faced slightly better air quality. By 2020 (using median pollution), these disparities narrowed (~33.59 for Black share; ~–6.37 for White share) but remained present.
For infant mortality, I regressed mortality rates for Black and White infants against pollution levels. For White infants, the coefficient rose from ~0.1334 in 2000 to ~0.2289 in 2020, with R² increasing from ~0.1943 to ~0.3469. For Black infants, the coefficient moved from ~0.0812 to ~0.1107, but R² remained low (~0.0630 down to ~0.0450). These results suggest that higher pollution levels are associated with higher infant mortality, particularly among White infants in the dataset.
These findings highlight important demographic and health disparities related to air pollution, though they do not establish definitive causality. The patterns suggest that poorer communities and those with higher proportions of Black residents have experienced greater pollution burden, and that elevated pollution may contribute to poorer infant health outcomes. Further research with more granular data and advanced modeling methods would help clarify the mechanisms and guide targeted interventions.