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Mass transit promoters in Atlanta suggested that inner city underemployment could be reduced by improving the accessibility of workers to jobs. In Atlanta, the distribution of underemployment, measured by income below the poverty line or less than full-time employment, is better explained by skill levels, discrimination, and socioeconomic circumstance than by accessibility to jobs. At every level of accessibility underemployment is worst among female heads of families, mostly black, poorly educated, with several children. Underemployment could better be tackled through job training, placement, and child care programs than through new transit development programs. KEY WORDS: Employment decentralization, Potential model, Transit planning, Underemployment.INCE World War I1 there has been a de-S cided redistribution of prosperous white population to the suburbs, leaving inner city areas increasingly poor and black. Many central city employers went out of business, new firms opened in the suburbs, and a sizable number of established companies relocated in the urban periphery. A majority of the new jobs created during the past decade in the United States have been outside central cities.l These shifts of residences and companies have triggered a controversy over whether the redistribution of jobs from central city to suburban areas aggravates the employment problems of the poor, and especially the poor blacks, who remain concentrated in the inner city. Kain hypothesized that immobile inner city black workers are forced to seek employment close to their residences, yet Mooney, Deskins, and Wheeler offered contradictory evidence.2 Pilot transportation projects which connected

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