Economic Targeting of Climate Protection: Evidence from Local Elected Officials

• In Event: Wealth, Business, and Political Power

Abstract

In the United States, the task of climate adaptation is fundamentally local in scale. Through their control over land use, their responsibilities for infrastructure and public services, and their ability to set taxes, local governments can help reduce—or amplify—harm and disruption caused by natural disasters and other climate-related hazards. Yet as communities attempt to become more resilient to climate risks, they may enact policies that reinforce existing inequalities. Research in local political economy demonstrates that local governments historically have exercised their powers in ways that benefit wealthy white property owners, contributing to widespread segregation and unequal access to public services (Fischel 2001; Rothstein 2017; Trounstine 2018; Einstein, Glick, and Palmer 2019). Mechanisms intended to manage environmental risk often become instruments for exclusion or the protection of property values (Glaeser and Ward 2009; Mullin, Smith, and McNamara 2018). Will local governments perpetuate these patterns through their response to climate hazards?

Among the most controversial of adaptation strategies is managed retreat—the relocation of people and properties out of high-risk areas, especially through voluntary buyout programs. Even more than for other local adaptation policies, the impacts of buyout programs are highly spatially concentrated. Affected property owners will tend to be clustered near one another, and because of widespread patterns of residential segregation—patterns that have been influenced by the amenities and disamenities of living near water—they will often share socioeconomic attributes that differ from the broader community. They may be wealthier than the typical community resident or, more commonly, poorer. Studies of buyouts that have occurred over the last several decades indicate that they have been concentrated in low-income areas (Mach et al. 2019; Elliott et al. 2020), evoking comparisons to mid-twentieth century urban renewal projects that displaced neighborhoods and aggravated racial tensions (Koslov 2016; Siders 2019). Yet observational studies cannot disentangle how local government decision making contributes to this pattern independent from factors such as the extent of property damage and homeowners’ willingness to accept buyouts.

This paper investigates how the distributional impacts of property buyouts affect local officials’ support for the policy. Data come from a survey conducted in spring 2020 of over 500 elected U.S. city and county officials. An experiment embedded in the survey tests whether politicians’ responses to a buyout proposal depend on identification of recipients as wealthy or low-income. Results show a significant difference in support across the targeted recipients: even when the cost recovery period is identical, elected officials were more likely to support buyouts for low-income homeowners. The difference in support became stronger after respondents were asked to consider specified benefits and drawbacks of buyouts. Tests of hypotheses based in the distributive politics literature produced null results, suggesting that local politicians’ responses to a buyout proposal are rooted not in electoral incentives, but instead in their perceptions of impacts on targeted recipients and the community. If local officials make decisions that reflect these preferences, the consequences will be to relocate people with the most economic need, even as localities continue to make investments to protect remaining property owners. The study advances understanding about how political response to climate risk may further entrench local inequality.

Author

• Megan Mullin, Duke University