Fig. 7: Sensitivity analysis of smoke damages per capita disparities by social vulnerability and race/ethnicity using differentiated relative risk and the value of a statistical life year.

a Damages per capita disparities by overall Social Vulnerability Index decile. Base case estimates are the points from Fig. 2a. Tracts are divided into deciles from least (1) to most (10) vulnerable using Social Vulnerability Index percentile ranks^38,39. b Damages per capita disparities by race/ethnicity. Base case estimates are the diamonds versus the dashed lines in Fig. 6b. a, b Data characterize 2017. Observations are percentage differences versus the national average: $308 per person for wildfire smoke and $313 per person for prescribed burn smoke for the base case. See Supplementary Tables 34–36 for national damages per capita for the alternative approaches. Base case estimates differentiate baseline risk (mortality rates) by race/ethnicity but not relative risk. Base case estimates use a uniform VSL approach ($9.97 million). Alternative approaches differentiate relative risk by race/ethnicity using data from the Medicare Cohort Study³³ and use a VSLY approach ($428 thousand per year)^80,81. See Supplementary Methods 5 for details on the sensitivity analysis of distributional impacts. Plotting uses the ggplot2 R package¹¹⁸.