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This study combines data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics with neighborhood-level industrial hazard data from the Environmental Protection Agency to examine the extent and sources of environmental inequality at the individual level. Results indicate that profound racial and ethnic differences in proximity to industrial pollution persist when differences in individual education, household income, and other micro-level characteristics are controlled. Examination of underlying migration patterns further reveals that black and Latino householders move into neighborhoods with significantly higher hazard levels than do comparable whites, and that racial differences in proximity to neighborhood pollution are maintained more by these disparate mobility destinations than by differential effects of pollution on the decision to move.A burgeoning body of literature demonstrates that in U.S. urban areas, concentrations of pollution and industrial hazards tend to be highest in neighborhoods with large populations of African American and Hispanic residents (Ash and Fetter 2004;Brulle and Pellow 2005;Downey 2005Downey , 2007Pastor, Sadd, and Hipp 2001). Moreover, evidence suggests that this racial inequality in exposure to environmental hazards may contribute to significant racial disparities in a variety of outcomes, including physical and psychological health, educational success, and perceptions of social order (Downey and Van Willigen 2005;Evans and Kantrowitz 2002; Morello-Frosch 2002, 2004;Ross, Reynolds, and Geis 2000; Sadd, Pastor, Boer, and Snyder 1999). Given these potential repercussions, developing an understanding of the extent of the magnitude of racial and ethnic differences in location near high levels of pollution and assessing the causes of this environmental inequality are clearly important endeavors.Yet, while there is some consensus that racial and ethnic disparities in exposure to industrial hazards exist in the aggregate (Ash and Fetter 2004;Derezinski, Lacy, and Stretesky 2003, Downey 2003;Morello-Frosch, Pastor, and Sadd 2001), we currently have very little information about the extent of racial and ethnic differences in proximity and exposure to environmental hazards at the individual level or about the individual-and household-level characteristics that help determine who lives near environmental hazards. As a result, the Direct correspondence to Kyle Crowder, Department of Sociology and Carolina Population Center, CB #8120, University Square, 123 West Franklin Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27516-2524. NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptAJS. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2011 January 1. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript available evidence leaves unanswered several important theoretical questions about the extent to which racial and ethnic differences in exposure to environmental hazards can be explained by group differences in economic resources or other sociodemographic characteristics. Moreover, despite assertions that the overrepresentat...

We use data from a variety of sources to describe recent dramatic changes in the composition, economic stability, and diversity of American families. The declining prevalence of early marriage, increasing level of marital dissolution, and growing tendency to never marry, especially among some racial and ethnic groups, reflect changes in the relative economic prospects of men and women and support the conclusion that marriage is becoming less valued as a source of economic stability. These developments also imply that relatively more children are born outside of marriage, spend at least part of their childhood in a single‐parent household, and endure multiple changes in family composition. Paralleling these trends have been sharp changes in the economic stability of families, characterized most notably by a growing importance of women's income and increasing economic inequality among American families.