The Depth and Subsets of Cumulative Burdens Across the United States

Introduction: The Justice40 initiative was introduced in 2021 to ensure that at least 40% of U.S. federal investments for environmental, energy, housing, and workforce development initiatives are allocated to disadvantaged communities. The Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool (CEJST) was developed to define disadvantaged communities to meet this goal. However, dichotomous community classification (disadvantaged vs. not) overlooks broad differences in community type, need, and depth of burdens. Methods: The authors conducted an assessment of the CEJST dataset within the contiguous United States to identify distinct profiles of community risk and spatial clustering. They assessed the extent of variation of demographic, environmental, and health disparities by comparing quartiles of the total number of Justice40 burden threshold criteria met in each U.S. census tract. The authors then conducted a principal component analysis to identify spatially co-occurring burdens and demographics across urban and rural Justice40 communities. Results: At least one Justice40 threshold burden criteria was met by 25,714 census tracts. There were distinct, spatially clustered groupings of community risks centered on eight individual or co-occurring components of socioeconomics, health and minority statuses, environmental burdens, age structures, and climate vulnerabilities. Urban and rural groupings were generally similar but differed by distribution across the United States. Discussion: Although Justice40 may not continue, federal funding to benefit burdened and climate-vulnerable communities should be focused on areas with the greatest need. With the authors’ nationwide findings, subsequent local approaches can be tailored to spatial groupings of co-occurring community characteristics and burdens. Data-driven resource delivery in collaboration with disadvantaged communities could enhance the benefits of future investments.