Transit Mobility, Jobs Access and Low-income Labour Participation in US Metropolitan Areas

TLDR

Policy makers claim that greater public transit mobility can improve employment for low‑income people, yet empirical evidence is scarce and patterns of transit access and labor participation remain largely unexplored. The study investigates whether increased transit access is linked to employment status among Temporary Assistance for Needy Families recipients in six U.S. metropolitan areas. Using individual TANF recipient locations, transit routes, and employment site data, the authors performed limited dependent variable regressions to predict recipients’ employment status.

Abstract

While policy-makers assert that increased public transit mobility can positively affect employment status for low-income persons, there is little empirical evidence to support this theory. It is generally assumed that public transit can effectively link unemployed, car-less, persons with appropriate job locations—hence the call for more public transit services to assist moving welfare recipients to gainful employment. Thus far, the available evidence is anecdotal, while general patterns of transit access in relationship to labour participation remain relatively unexplored. This analysis examines whether increased transit access is associated with the case status (employment status) of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) recipients in the Atlanta, Georgia; Baltimore, Maryland; Dallas, Texas; Denver, Colorado; Milwaukee, Wisconsin ; and Portland, Oregon metropolitan areas. Individual TANF recipient location data, transit route/stop data and employment location data were used in limited dependent variable regression analyses to predict the employment status of TANF recipients. The results of this analysis indicate that access to fixed-route transit and employment concentrations had virtually no association with the employment outcomes of TANF recipients in the six selected metropolitan areas.