GEOGRAPHIC ACCESS TO JOB OPPORTUNITIES AND LABOR-FORCE PARTICIPATION AMONG WOMEN AND AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE GREATER BOSTON METROPOLITAN AREA

Abstract

The spatial-mismatch hypothesis argues that African American labor-force participation is reduced by African Americans' inability to gain access to relatively distant suburban job opportunities. A significant limitation of the mismatch literature is that it has failed to recognize that a number of factors associated with gender may interact with race-based constraints on access to job opportunities to mediate the mismatch effect. The purpose of this exploratory research is to investigate how the relationship between geographic access to job opportunities and labor-force participation is influenced by the interaction of both race and gender in the greater Boston metropolitan area using data from the 5% Public Use Microdata Sample of the 1990 U.S. Census. The results indicate that proximity to intra-metropolitan job opportunities has no effect on African American labor-force participation, but that it has a positive effect on labor-force participation among White married mothers. These findings demonstrate the need for continued research that will more finely analyze how race, gender, and metropolitan characteristics intersect to determine how jobs and workers are matched to each other within a metropolitan labor market.