Poverty concentration, job access, and employment outcomes

ABSTRACT

Existing literature suggests that both access to jobs and poverty concentration can affect poor job seekers’ employment outcomes, but no research has tested the two factors together or examined how their effects interact. In this article, we examine the effects of job accessibility in places of various degrees of poverty concentrations, focusing on the employment status and commute distance of the poor. Using the Los Angeles metropolitan area as the case study, we find that spatial access does not explain unequal employment status of the poor: the association between access and employment status is insignificant in almost all places regardless of the poverty rates. Poor job seekers cannot take advantage of proximity to jobs even if they live in low-poverty places. The only exceptions are the places that experienced increases in both poverty rates and job access, where the estimation of job accessibility’s effects tends to be upwardly biased. The association between job accessibility and commute distance is significant in places with low to medium poverty rates, meaning that for poor workers who live in low-poverty neighborhoods, proximity to jobs can reduce their commute distance. For those who live in high-poverty places, proximity to jobs does not significantly affect their commute distances. These findings challenge the optimistic expectations of housing dispersion programs, at least their effects on employment status.

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the editor and the anonymous referees for their comments to improve the article.

Notes

1. We tried a two-stage least squares (2SLS) model to estimate worker-to-population ratios and automobile ownership endogenously. The automobile model uses population density and employment density as instrumental variables. The regression results are not significantly different from those of the ordinary least squares (OLS) model.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lingqian Hu

Lingqian Hu is an Assistant Professor at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. Her areas of research interests include transportation planning and policy, land use, and urban economics.

Genevieve Giuliano

Genevieve Giuliano is a Professor and the Senior Associate Dean at the Sol Price School of Public Policy, University of Southern California. She is also the Margaret and John Ferraro Chair in Effective Local Government. Professor Giuliano conducts research on relationships between land use and transportation, transportation policy analysis, and information technology applications in transportation.