Beyond the Spatial Mismatch: Welfare Recipients and Transportation Policy

Abstract

Beneath the broad umbrella of agreement about transportation’s relationship to poverty is considerable discord about the specific nature of the problem and about where and how transportation solutions should be applied. Much of the existing scholarship on this topic focuses on the spatial mismatch hypothesis, the geographic separation between employment and housing. Although this concept has merit, to meet the transportation needs of welfare recipients, policy makers must move beyond conventional notions of the spatial mismatch hypothesis. This article draws from theoretical and empirical scholarship on travel behavior, transportation infrastructure, poverty, gender studies, and residential segregation and recommends transportation policies to better connect welfare recipients to employment.