Exploration of Poverty, Employment, Earnings, Job Search, and Commuting Behavior of Persons with Disabilities and African-Americans in New Jersey

Abstract

The extant literature that touches on the role of transportation in enhancing job accessibility for persons with disabilities has largely remained separate from the literature on the role of transportation in the job accessibility of African-Americans. Each stream focuses on either race or disability. Although a few studies have examined the combined effect of race and disability on economic outcomes, researchers have rarely examined the role of transportation. With the assertion that transportation issues for minority populations and persons with disabilities are often similar, this study encompassed race, disability, economic well-being, and transportation. Taking New Jersey as the study area, the study examined how disability and race are related to employment, poverty, and earnings and how the commuting and job-search behavior of persons with disabilities is affected by their race. Statistical models clearly show that both disability and race are strongly associated with economic well-being. Analysis also shows that African-American persons with disabilities are far more likely to use public transit than non-African-Americans with disabilities. The commuting patterns of workers in the state also indicate that fewer African-Americans have jobs in close proximity to their homes than those of other races, regardless of disability. The policy implications of these findings are discussed.

Disability, Mobility and Transport in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Thematic Review

“…This gap exists across high- [20] and low-income countries and is largely due to a lack of agreed measures to estimate access and inclusion. Of the limited literature available that does address this, intersecting issues of age, gender, poverty, ethnicity, disability, etc., come to the fore (e.g., [2,[30][31][32]). These make it difficult to attribute transport-or lack of-as a singular cause for exclusion.…”

Disability, wages, and commuting in New York

“…The commuting patterns of people with disabilities during this time period have not been studied much. We know that the average one-way commute time in the U.S. dipped by a fraction of a minute during the recession ( Ingraham, 2019 ) and that nationally, disabled and non-disabled workers had similar commute times (Brucker and Rollins 2019; Deka and Lubin, 2012 ).…”

“…In the general population, there is strong evidence to demonstrate that transportation and commuting patterns greatly influence people's job access and wage earnings ( Preston and McLafferty, 2016 ; Kim et al, 2012 ), but these studies do not address disability. The few studies that investigate the commute patterns of people with disabilities include Deka and Lubin (2012) and Brucker and Rollins (2019) , who found commute times to be similar between workers with and without disabilities in New Jersey and across the U.S., respectively. Another study by Farber and Páez (2010) examined adults with disabilities alone and they found public transit users to have longer commute distances to work compared to car users across Canada.…”

“…While these studies controlled for multiple sociodemographic factors affecting commute times, none accounted for intraurban geographies, thus overlooking how local geographic contexts influence commute times. Brucker and Rollins (2019) included a dummy variable for metropolitan status while the other two studies did not consider geography in their statistical models ( Deka and Lubin, 2012 ; Farber and Páez, 2010 ). Geographic contexts, especially residential contexts, differ in the numbers, types, and locations of job opportunities; the availability of social and employment services; and transportation access and cost – all of which shape workers' commuting decisions and wage earnings.…”

“…This research provides new empirical insights into the conditions of employment and commuting for urban and suburban residents with disabilities in a major U.S. metropolitan region. We also consider how gender, race, and transportation mode, factors significant in previous research ( Preston and McLafferty, 2016 ; Craig and van Tienoven, 2019 ; Deka and Lubin, 2012 ; Kim et al, 2012 ), intersect with disability to influence wage and commuting trends.…”