This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Whether a community is prioritized for public support can depend on how its needs are measured, according to new research from the University of New Hampshire. The study found significant differences in how government screening tools identify communities, particularly in rural areas where those differences could affect access to funding.
Researchers compared four environmental justice screening tools, which use data on factors such as income, pollution and health to identify communities that may need additional public support. Three were developed by the White House, the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Department of Transportation (DOT), while the fourth was developed by New York state. Nationally, the DOE tool designated about 18% of census tracts as disadvantaged, compared with about 35% for the White House and DOT tools.
In New York state, more than half of census tracts (51.3%) were identified as disadvantaged by at least one of the four tools, but only about 14% were identified that way by all four. "We expected some differences, since each agency has its own mission. What surprised us was how large they were and how often they came from choices that aren't obvious from the documentation," said Qingran Li, assistant professor of economics at UNH's Peter T.
Paul College of Business and Economics. "The tools also disagreed more for rural communities, where resources tend to be more constrained, and investment may have historically lagged." The study, published in Nature Communications, was conducted by Li; Stephen Bird, director of UNH's Carsey School of Public Policy; Susan Powers of Clarkson University; and Thomas Robbins of Schneider Electric. Urban areas were more consistently identified as disadvantaged across the four tools.
The DOE tool did not designate any rural New York census tracts as disadvantaged, while New York's own tool identified the greatest number of rural and suburban communities. The researchers note there is no single formula for measuring disadvantage. Screening tools can consider factors such as income, health, transportation access, environmental conditions and climate risks, but they don't necessarily use the same factors or assign them the same weight.
They also differ in whether a community is compared with others nationwide, within its state or within its region. New York's tool, for example, accounts for regional differences, making it more likely that less urbanized communities are identified as disadvantaged. "One of the things we saw in some of the federal tools is that rural areas often are not highly prioritized, in part because environmental problems are diffuse, but the economic vulnerabilities in those areas are very real," Bird says.
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