SINGLE MOTHER FAMILIES AND INDUSTRIAL POLLUTION IN METROPOLITAN AMERICA

Environmental inequality researchers have studied the distribution of social groups around a variety of environmental hazards. However, researchers have focused their attention primarily on race and class-based environmental inequality, largely ignoring the question of whether other subordinate groups-children, the elderly, women, welfare recipients, single mother families-are disproportionately burdened by environmental hazards. I address this gap in the literature by asking whether single mother families are overrepresented in environmentally hazardous neighborhoods, whether the percentage of single mother families in a neighborhood is a better predictor than a neighborhood's racial and income characteristics of environmental hazard presence levels, and whether the representation of single mother families in environmentally hazardous neighborhoods is similar to that of single father families and married parent families.