Analysis Environmental justice and air pollution: A case study on Italian provinces Anna Rita Germani a, ⁎, Piergiuseppe Morone a,1 , Giuseppina Testa b a DiGEF, Department of Law, Philosophy and Economic Studies, University of Rome “La Sapienza”, p.le Aldo Moro, 5, 00185 Rome, Italy b Department of Economics, University of Foggia, Largo Papa Giovanni Paolo II, 1, 70100 Foggia, Italy abstract article info Article history: Received 8 May 2012 Received in revised form 2 July 2014 Accepted 14 July 2014 Available online xxxx JEL classifications: Q56 K32 Keywords: Environmental justice Social inequalities Environmental Kuznets curve Air pollution emissions This paper provides an empirical analysis on the relationship between income, demographic characteristics and concentrations of air industrial pollutants within the Italian provinces. Two general conclusions can be drawn from the empirical results. First, the estimates obtained are consistent with an inverse U-shaped environmental Kuznets curve: air pollution releases increase with income up to a turning point where the relation reverts. Second, there is evidence that air releases tend to be higher in provinces with high concentration of females as households' head and with high concentration of children. Since our findings do not point to environmental discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, this suggests that environmental justice issues in Italy are not likely to manifest themselves along racial and ethnic terms but instead in terms of social categories and gender composi- tion. We also find that the proxy variables employed to measure the efficiency or inefficiency of law enforcement are associated with higher levels of pollution. In terms of policy implications, this result suggests the need to strengthen, all through the country, the local enforcement of environmental laws in order to possibly reduce the negative effects on ambient air pollution. © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The relationship between income and environmental pollution has been the subject of a large amount of both theoretical and empirical studies 2 since the pioneering works by Grossman and Krueger (1991, 1993, 1995). An assessment of the existing literature suggests that there are two prevalent strands of literature focusing either on the nexus between income and environmental pollutants or between income, demographic composition of population and pollution, where little effort has been made to join these two strands of literature together. The aim of this study is an attempt to fill this gap. Basically, the literature on environmental pollutants and income aims to test the validity of the so-called environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis which postulates an inverted U-shaped relationship be- tween the level of environmental degradation and income similar to that suggested by Kuznets (1955) between income inequality and eco- nomic development. That is to say that the level of per capita income has a negative effect on environmental quality measured by the levels of pollution, but, beyond a certain level, per capita income has a positive effect on environmental quality. A crucial issue becomes the estimation of the turning point in such relationship (Grossman and Krueger, 1995; List and Gallet, 1999). The second strand of the literature looks at the causal relationship between income, on the one hand, and demographic and socio-economic characteristics of population, on the other hand. This gave rise to the environmental justice movement 3 that deals main- ly with the question of whether disadvantaged population groups, such as racial and socio-economic minorities, suffer from living in more polluted areas and whether demographic composition influences the amount of pollution. The key concept of environmental justice issues is that low-income groups and ethnic minorities bear disproportionate Ecological Economics 106 (2014) 69–82 ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +39 064991 0642; fax: +39 064991 0648. E-mail addresses: annarita.germani@uniroma1.it (A.R. Germani), piergiuseppe.morone@uniroma1.it (P. Morone), g.testa@unifg.it (G. Testa). 1 Tel.: +39 064991 0567; fax: +39 064991 0648. 2 In particular, Grossman and Krueger analyze the EKC through the discussion of three different mechanisms: scale effect, composition effect and technique effect. Scale effect shows that even if the structure of the economy and technology does not change, an increase in production will result in an increase of pollution and environmental degrada- tion. Economic growth through scale effect has a negative impact on the environment. On the other hand, the authors argue that composition effect may have a positive impact on the environment. Pollution increases in the earlier stages of development, while in the later stages of development pollution decreases as the economic structure moves towards services and light manufacturing industries. Therefore, composition effect could lower environmental degradation through this change in the structure of production. Finally, technique effect captures improvements in productivity and adaptation of cleaner tech- nologies, which will lead to an increase in environmental quality. 3 Environmental justice is a movement that emerged in the United States in the 1980s and has become a concern in the US federal policy agenda in the early 1990s. In 1994, in fact, environmental justice was institutionalized at federal level through an Executive Or- der, which focused attention on human health and environmental conditions in low- income and minority communities (Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits dis- crimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2014.07.010 0921-8009/© 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Ecological Economics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolecon