Poverty Suburbanization, Job Accessibility, and Employment Outcomes

Abstract

The last decade of urbanization throughout many cities have seen a perceptible shift in the demand for centralized urban amenities while poverty has increasingly decentralized. Yet, the opportunity landscape of these shifting geographies of poverty and prosperity are not well understood. In this article, we examine how access to employment for low-income households has been impacted as a result of these changing geographies. Using a case study on the Charlotte metropolitan area we examine whether the suburbanization of poverty and reinvestment in the center city has reshaped the job opportunity landscape for low-wage residents. The objectives of this article are twofold. First, we calculate and map autobased accessibility from all neighborhoods in the Charlotte metropolitan area to job locations, differentiated by wage categories, in 2010 and 2017 to identify potential changes in the mismatch between low-income households and access to employment. We use a point-level employment dataset for these two years and calculate accessibility originating from census block groups. Second, we estimate the extent to which access to employment has affected employment rates and household incomes at the neighborhood level using a first-difference, spatial two-stage least squares model with instrumental variables. Our findings suggest that changes in accessibility had no significant effect on changes in neighborhood employment rates. However, we find evidence that increasing accessibility for lower-income households could have a positive effect on neighborhood median household incomes. Overall, the polycentric nature of Charlotte appears to have reduced the spatial mismatch between low-income workers and low-wage jobs.

Local development, metropolitan sustainability and the urbanization-suburbanization nexus in the Mediterranean region: A quantitative exercise

“…However, in partial agreement with other studies focusing on contemporary Athensand in partial disagreement with more general studies carried out in other European cities (e.g. Timár & Váradi, 2001;Morya & Ram, 2020;Delmelle et al, 2021) development of high-technology services exerted a marginal effect on suburban areas. This evidence reflects the economic structure of the city, still oriented toward traditional services, manufacture, and the public sector (Cecchini et al, 2019).…”

“…According to the theory of City Life Cycle (CLC), urbanization and suburbanization were regarded as sequential stages of metropolitan development (Berry, 1980;Duvernoy et al, 2018;Klaassen et al, 1981). At the same time, empirical tests of CLC theory in contemporary cities were basically run considering variations over time in individual (target) variables at the base of metropolitan growth (Heider & Siedentop, 2020;Kabisch & Haase, 2011;Morelli et al, 2014) and especially population dynamics in inner cities and suburbs (De Vidovich & Scolari, 2022;Delmelle et al, 2021;Erkip, 2000;Gordon & Cox, 2012). The univariate analysis of a single attribute of urban expansion, such as population growth, provided partialand sometimes biasedevidence to CLC assumptions (e.g.…”

Does Job Accessibility Matter in the Suburbs? Black Suburbia, Job Accessibility, and Employment Outcomes

“…This is consistent with the study that suggests that in metropolitan areas with smaller spatial separation between workers and jobs, higher job accessibility may not influence employment outcomes. However, higher job accessibility may result in higher household income levels as households may have more job options to choose from [52]. In Chicago, where the spatial pattern of mismatch is most evident, the majority of the Black population is concentrated in the city, and an increase in job accessibility is positively associated with employment and earnings.…”

Evaluating Equity: A Method for Analyzing the Transit Accessibility of Affordable Housing Units

“…A second limitation relates to the selection of the destinations in the calculation of transit accessibility levels. Some studies suggest that people living in low-income communities are more likely to work in or be qualified only for low-wage jobs (70)(71)(72). The absence of an analysis of transit accessibility to low-wage job destinations could lead to an underestimation of the transit inequity issues faced by affordable housing units because their residents are typically low-income individuals and may be more likely to be employed in low-wage jobs.…”