The legacy of Victorian-era pollution still shapes English cities

THE EAST END of London was long an epitome of industrial squalor. Today its smokestacks are gone, but it remains the city’s poorest area. This lopsided distribution of poverty is typical in England, where the western halves of metropolitan areas tend to be richer than the eastern ones.

What accounts for this pattern? In London the most intuitive reason is the River Thames. Historically, it carried wastewater from west to east, and its banks downstream from the city centre were lined with docks, which might have drawn low-earning workers to the area. But if the river were the cause, fluvial currents would probably point towards rough parts of other cities too. Instead, the east is poorer even in Bristol and Manchester, where rivers flow west. A newly published paper, by Stephan Heblich, Alex Trew and Yanos Zylberberg, argues instead that wind was the culprit, by blowing air pollution east and causing the rich to flee in the opposite direction.