Rural Out-Migration and Environmental Risk: Examining the Association between Hazardous Waste Facilities and Population Loss

Lori M. Hunter, University of Colorado at Boulder
Jeannette Sutton, University of Colorado at Boulder

This research extends consideration of the demographic correlates of the local environment to include proximate facilities potentially posing risk to proximate environmental quality, namely facilities that manage, treat, or store hazardous wastes. Such facilities may offer economic gains through jobs and tax revenue, although they may also act as environmental disamenities. As such, local quality of life impacts can be either positive or negative. We examine the possibility that the presence of such facilities equates with differential loss of rural population, focusing on human capital, through modeling of aggregate outmigration rates, as well as age and education composition of outmigration streams, and the number of hazardous waste facilities, incinerators, and landfills across rural counties within the 48 contiguous states. Preliminary results reveal significant associations between outmigration and HWFs, generally suggesting lower outmigration rates from rural areas with more such facilities, although little variation with regard to rural human capital loss.