redressing information inequality through social justice research: the case of environmental justice

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REDRESSING INFORMATION INEQUALITY THROUGH SOCIAL JUSTICE RESEARCH: THE CASEOF ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICEAuthor(s): CAROLYN BABERSource: Public Administration Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 4 (WINTER 2009), pp. 582-609Published by: SPAEFStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41219999 .

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REDRESSING INFORMATION INEQUALITY THROUGH SOCIAL JUSTICE RESEARCH: THE CASE OF ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

CAROLYN BABER San Diego State University

ABSTRACT

Within the context of environmental justice, this essay will identify publicly available socio-economic data sets and suggest how they may be used for more effective empirical research (allowing for collaboration between scholars and practitioners). For analytical purposes, the important questions regarding any given instance of environmental injustice fall into four broad categories: problem definition, history of the problem, measurement of the problem, and availability of solutions to the problem. There is very little in the experience of most citizens, or most public officials, which would prepare them to embark upon this kind of scavenger hunt. Providing some clues, and even a rough map, to aid in the search for answers is the purpose of this article.

INTRODUCTION

A 2004 symposium issue of the International Journal of Public Administration explored the maturation of the field of public administration. In this issue Richard Johnson criticized the discipline for taking a narrow approach to questions of diversity and social equity by concentrating on issues of race and gender. He suggested the discipline refocus its efforts to include class-related research (Johnson, 2004) Other authors have documented the extent to which public administration research has focused on race and gender while neglecting social class



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(and sexual orientation). Oldfield, Chandler, and Johnson (2004) conducted a four country review (Australia, Brazil, Canada, United States) of public administration literature and found nearly all the social equity articles focused on race and gender with little attention to social class. The explanations offered for the lack of research on social class range from class bias in higher education to the "professionalization" of public administration. These authors have argued that low-income families are the most underrepresented group at major universities. This is true among both students and faculty, few of whom have significant personal experience with issues of social class (Oldfield, Chandler, & Johnson, 2004, p. 165-166) The authors also argue that because "professionalization [of public administration] promotes and responds to the needs of the state, it can and often does set the permissible limits of scholarly debate." Consequently, there is an almost total neglect of (or relative silence about) the distribution of wealth in a "society of unequal social classes?" (Johnson, 2003, p. 512). While community activists often find this frustrating, understanding the source of the problem is essential to refraining appeals for greater attention to issues of social equity.

Another possible explanation for this blind spot of public administration research on the subject of social class is that the concept, whatever its explanatory power, does not constitute a "strategic" variable in our system of government. To put the matter indelicately, it is illegal to discriminate against someone because of race, but it isn't illegal to discriminate against someone who is poor. Public administrators understand (better than most) that race is a political and legal trump card. By comparison, social class is an interesting phenomenon, but not a potent category. Racial discrimination comes "prepackaged" with its own sense of urgency and a readily apparent range of solutions. Given these background facts, public administration



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researchers, particularly those who target a practitioner audience, might be forgiven if they respond more eagerly to what the law problematizes than to what it tacitly permits. But as Oldfield, Candler, & Johnson (2004) suggest, the American Society for Public Administration Code of Ethics exhorts researchers to take a proactive approach to issues of social class and inequity and urges them to work to improve and change laws and policies that are counterproductive or obsolete. Understanding this problematic relationship between the legal environment and professional ethics of public administration allows social activists to better focus their organizing and lobbying activities.

Finally, the lack of social class research also has its roots in the general state of public administration. Streib and Roch (2005) reviewed critiques of public administration research and identified "hard" and "soft" barriers to strengthening public administration research. These barriers, or boundaries, "limit the quality of methods used in public administration research" (p. 38). Hard boundaries include lack of available data to support a study and lack of adequate funding to develop resources/data sets. Soft boundaries include research as a low priority, low-quality dissertations and doctoral training ineffectiveness. Streib and Roch do not explicitly define appropriate topics, but cite observations about the need for "long-term studies of administrative phenomena." This perspective sheds considerable light on the different approaches that public administration research has taken to race and class. When compared with race, social class appears to be an "engendered" feature of society rather than the result of deliberate acts (Pogge, 1989). It is a foreseeable consequence of the fundamental structure of a private enterprise economy, an individualistic culture, and a right-oriented political structure. For that reason, inequality of social class is, so to speak, part of the liberal



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"deal" that is the foundation of modern society. A young scholar who wishes to be a change agent (or merely a successful old scholar) will shy away from a topic that appears to lead nowhere, creating a soft boundary. And government agencies and funding organizations will refuse to expend scarce resources documenting a phenomenon that cannot be changed, creating significant hard boundaries. So the long-term studies Streib and Roch call for are unlikely ever to be undertaken. Confronted with this persistent bias against systematic and rigorous research on the impact of social class in public policy and administration, community activists often must develop the ability to access existing social research from other fields and apply it to their concerns.

Critiques of public administration research often provide conflicting recommendations for improving the quality of that research. Their suggestions generally concern issues of theory, methods, and focus. A public administration researcher is confronted with three basic dilemmas. Should research pursue theory development or problem-solving? Should the researcher employ academically sophisticated methods or rely primarily on widely accessible methods? And should the results of the research be presented with an academic focus or a practitioner focus?

Streib and Roach (2005) have several recommendations to resolve this tension between theory, methods and focus and to overcome hard and soft boundaries. They suggest "academics must build a better research infrastructure," although they acknowledge that coping with the lack of data and funding can be difficult. They advocate strong empirical research (while valuing diverse methods) noting that statistics is the language of government in many respects. Yet they recognize that research results will be effective only if they provide information that is relevant to the concerns of public affairs



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practitioners. So Streib and Roch also call for better relationships with practitioners who can help with data collection, provide access to data from secondary sources, and act as informants and guides.

As a first step in responding to the need identified by Streib and Roch, this essay will identify publicly available data sets and suggest how they may be used for more effective empirical research on social equity (allowing for collaboration between scholars and practitioners) while support for more funding is cultivated. In order to lend a more substantive and concrete quality to this discussion, it will be set in the context of problems of environmental justice. A focus on the study of environmental justice research can provide:

1 . a model for the inclusion of social class as an element of research study; 2. an approach for overcoming the obstacle of appropriate data sets by relying on public available data sets with little or no budget; 3. a format for developing cooperation between not only practitioner and academic, but with community activists as well; and 4. a roadmap for studying issues of social class within the small geographic areas that are often of greatest concern to public administration practitioners and community activists alike.

By providing academicians, practitioners, and community activists a gateway to existing sources of information on social class, the opportunity can be created for the linkages of class and environmental injustice to be cast in sharper relief.



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OVERVIEW OF ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE ISSUES

Government interventions in the area of the environment generally occur in one of two circumstances. First, an environmental issue may arise as the result of a market failure. Government policies (or, sometimes, the failure to make policy) can result in prices that send the wrong signals to consumers and producers, leading them to make unwise use of scarce resources and the environment (Freeman, 2003). Second, environmental policies can be prompted by an inequity in the distribution of environmental benefits or costs that reproduce and reinforce the pre-existing social and economic inequities of a society (Levenstein & Wooding, 1998).

In the case of market failure, one has the assistance of the market in identifying the existence and nature of the environmental issue at hand and developing policy alternatives. This fact is reflected in the proliferation of "market oriented" strategies for addressing environmental problems (Rosenbaum, 2002). In the case of the inequitable distribution of environmental costs and benefits, however, matters are more difficult. It is not enough that some group feels disadvantaged, or even that some governmental organization declares that a particular group has been victimized (Rhodes, 2003). Environmental justice advocates must prove their case politically because the market will not assist them and they are unlikely ever to set foot in a courtroom. In attempting to do this, they often become involved in information-based battles they are ill- equipped to wage. To cite only one example, the United Church of Christ's Commission for Racial Justice used zip codes as the base unit for geographic measurement in their ground-breaking report toxic waste and race (United Church of Christ, 1987). But subsequent analysts have argued that census tracts (or even block groups) are more



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appropriate for measuring environmental inequities than are zip codes (Been, 1994). For community activists and well- meaning public officials alike, it is often the case that "there are many good questions and few good answers" (Rhodes, 2003, p. 119).

What are the most important of these questions and where can answers be found? For the purposes of most practitioners and community activists, the important questions regarding any given instance of environmental injustice fall into four broad categories. These include questions regarding problem definition, questions about the particular history of the problem, questions having to do with the measurement of the problem, and questions about the availability of solutions to the problem. These general problem categories are quite familiar to policy analysts (Birkland, 2005). They are also prominent in the literature on citizen participation and community activism (Faga, 2006). But refining these categories to fit specific circumstances is a challenge to even the most capable policy scholars. Community activists and public administrators are at an even greater disadvantage. There is very little in the experience of most citizens, or most public officials for that matter, that would prepare them to embark upon this kind of scavenger hunt. Answering these questions will always be a highly context specific task. It cannot be reduced to a formula. And, it certainly cannot be done in an article in a manner that will be applicable to all instances of environmental injustice. Providing some clues, and even a rough map, to aid in the search for answers is the more limited purpose of this essay.

PROBLEM DEFINITION

Problems of environmental injustice, like people, come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes, an injustice is simply a matter of location. Large corporations drill for oil



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where they believe the oil is to be found and they build nuclear power plants in close proximity to the communities that require the power generated. Decisions like these may or may not be just in the strictest sense, but there are no obvious race or class biases involved. Where a corporation chooses to refine its oil or dispose of its nuclear waste is another matter. Oil refineries tend to be located in coastal areas because of their proximity to shipping facilities and nuclear waste disposal is proposed for Nevada because of its particularly stable geology. But it would be disingenuous to argue that the relative powerlessness of residents in areas surrounding ports and the political vulnerability of the residents of a small state like Nevada have nothing to do with these decisions.

The issue of residency in areas at risk raises another question. Is the matter simply one of location, or does a person's income also matter? To put it more bluntly, do people live in hazardous areas as a result of poverty? Raising this question may shed no light on the plight of Nevada, but it would seem to be central to an understanding of the problem of oil refineries. Moreover, poverty can be a source of disproportionate environmental risk that is entirely independent of location. One prominent example would be the risks associated with lead poisoning. Exposure to lead from automobile exhaust was dealt with by removing lead from gasoline. Likewise, lead has been eliminated from house paint. But the risks of lead-based paint in the homes of the poor persists (Bullard, 1994). And this is true regardless of the home's location.

Finally, environmental injustice can often be related to issues of group identity. There are numerous examples. One is the exposure of economically disadvantaged Hispanic farm workers to pesticides and herbicides. Another is the risk faced by Asian populations, regardless of income, because of their higher consumption of fish that is sometimes tainted by water pollution (Rhodes, 2003).



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Neither of these is related to location. The first is clearly related to income, the second is not. Only rarely does one find instances of intentional environmental injustice expressed as free standing race-hatred. However, it does happen. After gaining judicial recognition of their off- reservation treaty rights in 1983, Chippewa Indians in Wisconsin seeking to practice spear fishing were met by angry white protesters who threw rocks, fired shots, and yelled racial epithets at them (Gedicks, 1998).

Documenting the aspects of an instance of environmental injustice that have to do with location, income, and group identity of affected populations (and then relating them accurately to one another) is a daunting task for experts and academics who have the time, resources, and training for such work. The analytical techniques and results of even so capable an agency as the United States Army Corps of Engineers are the constant subject of dispute (Munger, 2000). And the Reserve Mining controversy in Minnesota has confronted environmental ethicists with moral and conceptual challenges for over thirty years (Heineman, Bluhm, Peterson, & Kearny, 2002). If community activists and local public officials can improve their ability to access the information at issue in such contests, it can reasonably be hoped that environmental outcomes can become more equitable over time.

Location and income are a few of the elements used to determine social class. Group identity in environmental justice research can be broadened to socio-economic position (distribution of occupation, income, wealth, education and social status). The public health field has been engaged in the use of social class, as defined as socio- economic position, and population health. Krieger, Williams, and Moss (1997) set out a framework for measuring social class for public health research that includes income, poverty, deprivation, wealth and



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education. They advocate the collection and use of data at the individual, household and neighborhood level to capture people's living conditions through time and location. Research into issues of environmental justice will benefit from a more fully developed concept of social class as socio-economic position (resource-based and prestige based measures).

Social class research in the United States is hampered by a lack commonly accepted schema. However, data for determining socioeconomic position can be mined from readily available U.S. Census Bureau data. Kreiger, Williams, and Moss suggest seven census-based measures of socio-economic status (p. 355). Social class can be measured as the percent of employed persons in census- defined occupation groups and working class neighborhoods can be defined as 66% of employed in working-class occupations. The Nam-Powers-Boyd Occupational Status Scale (Nam & Boyd, 2004) can be used to differentiate among social groups. This scale is produced after each decennial census. Measures for poverty, wealth, education, crowding and population density complete a description of socioeconomic position. The U.S. Census Bureau's American FactFinder <http://factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/main.html> provides an easy to use gateway to locating the suggested measures for determining socioeconomic position. Data for poverty, education and population density can be found through this tool.

Additional sources for statistics include FedStats <http://www.fedstats.gov> a project to provide access to official statistics from over 100 federal agencies. Statistics cover economic and population trends, crime, education, health care, and more. The "Statistics By Geography From U.S. Agencies" page <http://www.fedstats.gov/regional.html> provides easy browsing for data offered by state, county, city,



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congressional district, and zip code. U.S. Census income data can be supplemented with data from the State and Local Personal Income program <http://www.bea.gov/regional/index.htm#state> of the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. However, the BEA definition of local may be too large for the requirements of research projects.

Data on income and wealth are also readily available. The Small Area Income & Poverty Estimates ^ttpi/Zwww.census.gov/hhes/www/saipe/overview.htm^ produced by the U.S. Census, provides more current estimates of selected income and poverty statistics than the most recent decennial census. Data is provided by state, county, and school district. The unusual small geographic area* school district, is mandated by the enabling act Improving Americans Schools Act (PL 103-382) reauthorizing distribution of Federal funds to school districts based on "the number of children aged 5 to 17, inclusive, from families below the poverty level on the basis of the most recent satisfactory data, ..., available from the Department of Commerce" (SAIPE Program Documentation, 2006).

Wealth data is collected as part of the U.S. Census Bureau Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) <http://www.sipp.census.gov/sipp/> and Federal Reserve Board Survey of Consumer Finance <http://federalreserve.gov/pubs/oss/oss2/scfindex.html>. The drawback to these two sources is the lack of small geographic area data. As an alternative, Kreiger, Williams, and Moss (1997, p. 355) suggest using readily available home ownership and household annual income to derive a wealth measure.

Finally, occupational and employment data, to supplement U.S. Census data, is available from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. For most BLS programs, data is published at the national, but some of the programs publish



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data for smaller geographic units to focus on local trends. The Overview of BLS Statistics Web page <http://www.bls.gov^ls/geography.htm> provides access to these smaller units of measurement. The challenge in using all of these sources of data is the agency's definition of locality. The smallest geographic unit may only be zip code or city. A fuller discussion of the difficulty of working with this sort of data appears below in the section on Measurement.

This more fully developed view of social class as socioeconomic position is better suited to the study of environmental justice issues, and other social justice issues, than the more occupation-based concerns of Johnson. The European nations are ahead of the U.S. in developing a Socio-economic Classification (ESeC) that can be used to examine issues of unemployment, education, poverty, deprivation and health across the European Union (Rose & Harrison, 2007). Funded through the Sixth Framework programme of the European Union, the objective of the ESeC is to facilitate comparative analyses among member states by "allowing] researchers to address the gap in our understanding between the prevalence and distribution of quality of life issues such as educational and health inequalities on the one hand and broader social and economic inequalities on the other" (European Socio- economic Classification, 2006, Project Objectives).

PROBLEM HISTORY

How one locates a problem of environmental injustice in time makes a significant difference in how that problem is ultimately addressed (Rhodes, 2003). To return to the example of oil refineries, it may matter a great deal whether the population characteristics (income and group identity/social class) in the area of a refinery siting predate the siting decision. If so, the presence of the refinery is



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arguably the result of a conscious decision to take advantage of a politically weak population or even to inflict an environmental hazard on the subjects of racial antipathy. If, however, the population in the area arrived after development of the refinery, the inequity they suffer may be of a different sort. While it may be a serious public concern that some people choose to endure an environmental hazard because they are too poor to escape it or because they are discriminated against in the housing market generally, the injustice at hand is not an environmental injustice per se. No special responsibility for the problem accrues to either the oil company or the public official who approved its siting decision.

Other environmental problems may have a different history in the sense that they have no real history at all. Siting decisions happen at a specific point in time. Other environmental problems are the result of ongoing actions or failures to act. For example, the exposure of farm workers to hazardous chemicals may produce negative consequences only over an extended period of time during which effective government monitoring might prevent the problem even from arising. And the siting of one particular facility may not pose a significant risk. But the tendency of other similar and related facilities to gather in that area at some point in the future may impose health risks on and diminish the property values of area residents.

The Where You Live section <http://www.epa.gov/epahome/whereyoulive.htm> of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Web site, includes several tools that may help residents begin to understand the environmental history of their area. The pilot Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) <http://www.epa-echo.gov/echo/> allows users to determine if any agency has conducted air, water or hazardous waste compliance inspections, violations were found, or enforcement actions were taken.



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Other layperson-friendly tools provide information about environmental activities that may affect air, water, and land; interactive maps about environmental conditions in a community; and learn what is being done locally to protect the environment; determine air quality; find information regarding toxic chemicals that are being used, manufactured, treated, transported, or released into the environment. The Envirçnmental Justice Geographic Assessment Tool <http://www.epa.gov/compliance/ environmentaljustice/assessment.html> provides "assessment variables [which] include demographics, such as persons per square mile, per capita income, and percent below the poverty line." While these tools are user friendly, they fall short of providing useful information for neighborhoods. The unit of measurement is often at the zip code, city or state level. Social class research for public health and environmental justice is best studied at the census-tract level as explained in the next section.

MEAUREMENT

Each type of environmental problem discussed above poses its own challenges in terms of isolating and measuring the empirical factors involved in defining the problem and locating its cause(s). It is rarely clear at an intuitive level how one should deal with these challenges. The demographic factors involved are complex and often inter-related. The racial and ethnic composition of both target and comparison populations can be measured at virtually any level. Income brackets can be defined in an almost limitless number of ways. Education and occupation categories are subject to manipulation. And, of course, race, ethnicity, income, education, and occupation are all related variables and their confounding relationships must be taken into consideration.



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Just as people can be characterized in a vast number of ways, places can be described along a variety of dimensions. Percentage of home ownership is often used as a surrogate measure of political activism (and influence). Population density is sometimes correlated with siting decision. And in order to answer "chicken or the egg" questions about siting decisions, it is often necessary to have longitudinal information about the length of residency in a given area. Most daunting of all, however, is relating these measures of place to measures of people. Mistakes made in this connection can either obscure or magnify the relationships between race, poverty, and environmental risk (Hiskes, 1998; Ringquist, 2003).

The difficulties in framing "community" as a unit of analysis have been at the center of debate about the environmental justice results. Williams (1999) provides three possible definitions of community: "(1) as a neighborhood (i.e., a place of cultural identity); (2) as part of a political jurisdiction (county, city, etc.); and (3) as approximated by data constructs of single observation units (like zip code areas and census tracts), or else composed of observational units aggregated together (e.g., radial zones created by a Geographic Information System (GIS) around a toxic site)" (p. 314). Williams' analysis of analytical units points out that different units (zip code versus census tract) can yield conflicting conclusions (p. 321-322). He suggests multiple units may be necessary for environmental justice research. For "discerning health risks as indicative of outcome inequity, then use some form of composite zone (either a radial zone crafted via GIS, or an aggregated zone composed of observational units, e.g., census tracts or block groups.)." For the purpose of determining discriminatory effects Williams suggests using the neighborhood as the analytical unit. It is with this unit that the socio-economic positions associated with class can be applied.



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Public administrators and community activists who lack the resources, or skills, necessary for developing a GIS based analytical unit, may consider using the Geospatial One-Stop (GOS) <http://geodata.gov> site. This site serves as a public gateway to geospatial information and "is designed to facilitate communication and sharing of geographic data and resources to enhance government efficiency and improve citizen services by making it easier, faster and less expensive for all levels of government and the public to access geospatial information" (U.S. Geological Survey, 2007). Useful data categories include: • The Cultural, Society, and Demographic listing of the

most relevant metadata records and website links containing social, cultural, or demographic information.

• The Human Health and Disease category for health theme related to the protection, improvement and promotion of the health and safety of all people.

Many agencies are providing not only the geospatial data, but interactive mapping features for users to create their own maps, including the U.S. Bureau of Census and EPA.

Finally, problems of measurement arise from the nature of the environmental risks themselves. Community activists will need information regarding the types of hazards that are present, the amount of each hazard present, the nature of the medium of transmission and the impact of that issue on exposure levels, and the level of risks imposed. Each of these factors must be considered individually and in relationship to the others. It is especially important to be aware of any cumulative or threshold effects that might change our view of how an environmental problem is situated in time. It is also important to be aware of the potential for greater environmental hazard resulting from a combination of factors which individually are either benign or relatively less important.



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The previously discussed Environmental Justice Geographic Assessment Tool can help with identifying the presence of hazards and the demographics of the community. Environmental Health and Toxicology <http://sis.nlm.nih.gov/enviro.html> is a "comprehensive toxicology and environmental health web site that includes access to resources produced by TEHIP and by other government agencies and organizations. This Web site includes links to databases, bibliographies, tutorials, and other scientific and consumer-oriented resources" (Toxicology and Environmental Health Information. 2007).

SOLUTIONS

Solutions for problems of environmental injustice can come in many forms. Under some circumstances, nothing succeeds quite like a well-timed election. But community activists must usually content themselves with something less grand, and civil servants are in no position to become political partisans. The solutions that environmental justice advocates must normally pursue are rather more mundane.

An initial task is often to determine whether an environmental hazard is actually the subject of a statutory scheme of regulation and, if so, which agency of government is responsible for its implementation. A generation of (arguably well-intentioned) elected officials has made this problem more difficult by attacking environmental problems in a piecemeal fashion, fabricating regulatory elements without ever integrating them into a coherent system. No clearer evidence of that could be offered than the chaotic and often dysfunctional structure of the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (Rosenbaum, 2002). Add to this the layered character of environmental regulation resulting from our historic commitment to federalism, and simply situating an environmental problem



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institutionally becomes a truly daunting challenge (Rabe, 2003).

The EPA attempts to provide some guidance through the regulatory maze with the Laws and Regulations <http://www.epa.gov/lawsregs/> section of the EPA Web site. In addition to searchable databases for federal legislation, regulations and proposed rules, the EPA provides a limited number of "plain English" guides to complex subjects as the Clean Air Act. Acknowledging the partnership with the states, the EPA also maintains a contact list for state environmental protection agency < http://www.epa.gov/epahome/state.htm> to help citizens identify appropriate regulatory agencies at the state level. While public administrators will have in-house counsel, community activists must turn elsewhere for general legal research support. The two major producers of online legal materials, Lexis and Westlaw, provide free, or nearly-free, versions of their premium services. LexisOne < http://www.lexisone.com/index.html> is designed to meet the needs of small or solo-practice law firms. Some case law and legal forms are free, while other legal practice resources are available for a fee. LexisOne also includes a well developed directory to free state-level legal resources. Westlaw (now Thomson) is the main competitor to Lexis. The FindLaw site <http://www.findlaw.com> provides a comprehensive listing of free legal resources for both professional and citizen.

The scope and diversity of our approach to environmental regulation complicates another step in the process of developing solutions to environmental inequity. An essential element of any successful effort to direct public policy is the generation of policy alternatives. There are numerous methods for generating policy alternatives. One can conduct a "best practices" search to determine what other jurisdictions have done when confronted with similar problems. One may consult (either directly or



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through the professional literature) experts in the field to determine what they recommend under the same general circumstances. Brainstorming sessions and Delphi planning techniques can be used to solicit ideas of stakeholders. Incremental adjustments to existing regulatory practices can be identified by surveying regulatory personnel. Mail or telephone surveys or focus group sessions can be used to determine the preferences of the public (demons & McBeth, 2001). And, of course, historical research can provide information regarding real- world experience with any policy alternative that these search processes might yield. Academics have access to "best practices" and historical research through online article databases. Access to the materials in these resources is limited to the primary users of the campus, faculty, students and staff. Some local public libraries may be able to provide community activists and public access to these materials. When access to published research is limited, or non-existent, Google Scholar <http://scholar.google.com> provides a free, and simple way to search for scholarly literature from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations. Some of these articles will be freely available while others must be purchased from the original publisher. Public administrators and citizen activists can also turn to research and reports published by the various federal agencies. The Catalog of U.S. Government Publications <http://catalog.gpo.gOv/F> can be used to identify these publications, many of which can be obtained from a local federal depository library, requested from the producing agency, or purchased from the Government Printing Office bookstore for a reasonable fee.



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CONCLUSION

Given the difficulties of acquiring social data at the census tract or other appropriately small geographic areas, it is easy to understand why issues of class have not been investigated in more systematic ways than they have to date. Social class data can be derived from a wide variety of sources. Increasing inequalities in health outcomes has revived interest among public health researchers in questions of social class (Krieger, Williams, & Moss, 1997). And occupational status scales have been generated from census data for over a century (Nam & Boyd, 2004). But many of these data are not collected at or, for confidentiality reasons, are not reported at the level of geographic units small enough to be useful. And there has, as yet, been no national effort comparable to the European Union's Statistical Harmonization Programme (Rose & Harrison, 2007) to pull these disparate data collections together in a manner that would allow us to fully describe and begin to understand existing patterns of inequity based on social class.

This essay has responded to the information inadequacy in an admittedly ad hoc manner, providing suggestions for coping with the situation rather than reforming it. What has been provided is a roadmap for the public administration researcher, professional civil servant, or community activist to use in improvising a situation- specific database to be used in attacking a particular instance of environmental injustice. By improving the use of social class data, actors in each of these target groups can avoid both the ambiguities that will only increase as more people choose to identify themselves as multi-racial and the loss of salience that race may suffer in an emerging "post-ethnic" America (Hollinger, 1995). The hope is that by resisting the temptation to put all of our environmental equity eggs in the single basket of race, a more balanced



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and complete analytical approach can be achieved. When and where this effort succeeds, a better understanding of the problems of social inequity and better policy outcomes may reasonably be expected.

APPENDIX

Problem Definition

Federal Interagency Council on Statistical Policy. FedStats. http://www.fedstats.gov

Provides access to official statistics from over 100 federal agencies; including economic and population trends, crime, education, health care, and more.

Federal Reserve Board. Survey of Consumer Finance. http://federalreserve.gov/pubs/oss/oss2/scfindex.html

Provide detailed information on the finances of U.S. families including "balance sheet, pension, income, and other demographic characteristics."

U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. State and Local Personal Income. http://www.bea.gov/regional/index.htm#state

Includes estimates of state personal income, disposable personal income and employment, and personal income for local areas (counties, metropolitan areas, and BEA economic areas).

U.S. Bureau of the Census. American FactFinder. http^/factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/main.html

Easy to use gateway for population, housing, economic, and geographic data.



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U.S. Bureau of the Census. Small Area Income & Poverty Estimates. http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/saipe/overview.html

Provides more current estimates of selected income and poverty statistics by state, county, and school district.

U.S. Bureau of the Census. Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) http://www.sipp.census.gov/sipp/

Includes data on poverty, income, employment, and health insurance coverage.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Overview ofBLS Statistics. http://www.bls.gov/bls/geography.htm

Provides occupational and employment data; some reported for smaller geographic units.

Problem History

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Where You Live. http://www.epa.gov/epahome/whereyoulive.htm

Provides access to several EPA databases covering air quality, toxic releases, and superfund sites. Iinteractive mapping tools, such as the Environmental Justice Geographic Assessment Tool, present environmental data in a visual manner. Local environmental actions (compliance inspections, enforcement actions) can be identified using the pilot Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) database.

Measurement

National Library of Medicine. Environmental Health and Toxicology. http://sis.nlm.nih.gov/enviro.html



604 PAQ WINTER 2009

This is a "comprehensive toxicology and environmental health web site .... includes links to databases, bibliographies, tutorials, and other scientific and consumer-oriented resources."

U.S. Geological Survey. Geospatial One-Stop (GOS). http://geodata.gov

This gateway provides access to a wide variety of geospatial information and data produced by federal agencies.

Solutions

FindLaw. http:/www.findlaw.com

Provides a comprehensive listing of free legal resources for both legal professionals and citizens.

Google Scholar. http://scholar.google.com

Provides a free, and simple way to search for scholarly literature; some articles will e free and some available for a fee.

LexisOne. http://www.lexisone.com/index.html

Provides free and fee-based access to legal materials; includes a directory of free state-level legal resources.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Laws and Regulations. http://www.epa.gov/lawsregs/

Includes searchable databases for federal legislation, regulations, and proposed rules.



PAQ WINTER 2009 605

U.S. Government Printing Office. Catalog of U.S. Government Publications. http://catalog.gpo.gOv/F

Identifies U.S. government publications, many of which can be obtained from a local federal depository library, requested from the producing agency, or purchased from the Government Printing Office bookstore.

REFERENCES

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Birkland, T. (2005). An introduction to the policy process: theories, concepts and models of public policy making. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.

Bullard, R. (1994). Environmental justice for all. In R. Bullard (Ed.), Unequal protection: environmental justice and communities of color, (pp. 3-22). San Francisco: Sierra Club.

Clemons, R., & McBeth, M. (2001). Public policy praxis: theory and pragmatism - a case approach. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

European Socio-economic Classification. (2004). Project Objectives. Retrieved February 24, 2008, from http://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/esec/desc/objectives.ph P

Faga, B. (2006). Designing public consensus: the civic theatre of community participation for architects, landscape architects, planners, and urban designers. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Federal Interagency Council on Statistical Policy. (12 March 2007). FedStats. Retrieved September 10, 2007, from http://www.fedstats.gov.



606 PAQ WINTER 2009

Federal Reserve Board, (n.d.) Survey of Consumer Finance. Retrieved September 10, 2007, from http://federalreserve.gov/pubs/oss/oss2/scfindex.ht ml>

Freeman, M. (2003). Economics, incentives, and environmental policy. In N. Vig & M. Kraft (Eds.), Environmental policy: new directions for the twenty-first century, (pp. 201-221). Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly.

Gedicks, A. (1998). Racism and resource colonization. In D. Färber (Ed.), The struggle for ecological democracy: environmental justice movements in the united states. New York: Guilford.

Google Scholar, (n.d.). Retrieved September 10, 2007, from http://scholar.google.com.

Heineman, R., Bluhm, W., Peterson, S., & Kearny, E. (2002). The world of the policy analyst: rationality, values, and politics. (3rd ed.). New York: Chatham House.

Hiskes, R. (1998). Democracy, risk, and community: technological hazards and the evolution of liberalism. New York: Oxford.

Hollinger, David, 1995). Postethnic America. New York: Basic Books.

Johnson, R.G. (2004). Has public administration grown up? A case for class-related education and research. International Journal of Public Administration 27(7), 509-517.

Krieger, N., Williams, D.R., & Moss, N.E. (1997). Measuring social class in US public health research: concepts, methodologies, and guidelines. Annual Review of Public Health, 18, 341-78.



PAQ WINTER 2009 607

Levenstein, C, & Wooding, J. (1998). The political ecology of American capitalism: new challenges for the environmental justice movement. In D. Färber (Ed.), The struggle for environmental democracy: environmental justice movements in the united states, (pp. 27-59). New York: Guilford.

LexisOne. (n.d.). Retrieved September 10, 2007, from http://www.lexisone.com/index.html.

Munger, M. (2000). Analyzing policy: choices, conflicts, and practices. New York: Norton.

Nam, C.B. & Boyd, M. (2004). Occupation status in 2000: Over a century of census-based measurement. Population Research and Policy Review, 23, 327- 358.

National Library of Medicine, (n.d.). Environmental Health and Toxicology. Retrieved September 10, 2007, from http://sis.nlm.nih.gov/enviro.html.

Oldfield, K. (2003). Social class and public administration: A closed question opens. Administration & Society, 35(4), 438-461.

Oldfield, K., Candler, G., & Johnson, R.G. (2004). Social class, sexual orientation, and toward proactive social equity scholarship. American Review of Public Administration, 36(2), 156-172.

Pogge, Thomas. (1989) Realizing Rawls. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Rabe, B. (2003). Power to the states: the promise and pitfalls of decentralization. In N. Vig & M. Kraft (Eds.), Environmental policy: new directions for the twenty-first century. (5th ed., pp. 33-56). Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly.

Rhodes, E. (2003). Environmental justice in America: a new paradigm. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.



608 PAQ WINTER 2009

Ringquist, E. (2003). Environmental justice: normative concerns, empirical evidence, and government action. In N. Vig & M. Kraft (Eds.), Environmental policy: new directions for the twenty-first century. (5th ed., pp. 249-274). Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly.

Rose, D. & Harrison, E. (2007). The European Socio- Economic Classifications new social class schema for comparative European research. European Studies, 9(3), 459-490.

Rosenbaum, W. (2002). Environmental politics and policy. (5th ed.). Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly.

Streib, G. & Roch, C. (2005). Strengthening public administration research: identifying boundaries and horizons. Journal of Public Administration, 28, 37- 55.

Thomson, (n.d.) FindLaw. Retrieved September 10, 2007, from http://www.findlaw.com.

Toxicology and Environmental Health Program. (2007). Fact Sheet. Retrieved September 10, 2007, from http^/www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/tehipfs. html.

United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice. (1987). Toxic wastes and race in the United States: a national report on the racial and socio-economic characteristics of communities with hazardous waste sites. New York: Public Data Access.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, (n.d.) Overview of BLS Statistics. Retrieved September 10, 2007, from http://www.bls.gov/bls/geography.htm.

U.S. Bureau of the Census, (n.d.) American FactFindev. Retrieved September 10, 2007, from http^/factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/main.html/.



PAQ WINTER 2009 609

U.S. Bureau of the Census, (n.d.) Small Area Income & Poverty Estimates. Retrieved September 10, 2007, from http://www.census.gOv/hhes/www/saipe/overview.h tml.

U.S. Bureau of the Census. Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). Retrieved September 10, 2007, from <http://www.sipp.census.gov/sipp/.

U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, (n.d.) State and Local Personal Income. Retrieved September 10, 2007,from http://www.bea.gov/regional/index.htm#state.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, (n.d.). Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO). Retrieved September 10, 2007, from http://www.epa-echo.gov/echo/.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, (n.d.). Environmental Justice Geographic Assessment Tool Retrieved September 10, 2007, from http://www.epa.gov/compliance/environmentaljusti ce/assessment.html

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, (n.d.) Where You Live. Retrieved September 10, 2007, from http://www.epa.gov/epahome/whereyoulive.htm.

U.S. Geological Survey. Geospatial One-Stop (GOS). (n.d.) Retrieved September 10, 2007, from http://geodata.gov.

U.S. Government Printing Office, (n.d.). Catalog of U.S. Government Publications. Retrieved September 10, 2007, from http://catalog.gpo.gOv/F.



redressing information inequality through social justice research: the case of environmental justice

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