{"title":"Commuting barriers to low-wage employment","authors":"Scott Abrahams , James Mabli","doi":"10.1016/j.regsciurbeco.2023.103970","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Lack of access to affordable transportation has been hypothesized to be a barrier to employment among low-wage workers. We build a structural job search model to investigate how commuting costs influence the employment decisions of low-wage workers in the United States, and whether differences in commuting by race and education can explain observed disparities in employment. We find that commuting itself poses a significant barrier to overall low-wage employment, as the associated costs are high relative to potential wages. However, we find that inter-group differences in commuting costs account for a much smaller fraction of inter-group employment disparities than do differences in other labor market factors such as the wage offer distribution and offer arrival rates.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48196,"journal":{"name":"Regional Science and Urban Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.5000,"publicationDate":"2023-12-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Regional Science and Urban Economics","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166046223001059","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Lack of access to affordable transportation has been hypothesized to be a barrier to employment among low-wage workers. We build a structural job search model to investigate how commuting costs influence the employment decisions of low-wage workers in the United States, and whether differences in commuting by race and education can explain observed disparities in employment. We find that commuting itself poses a significant barrier to overall low-wage employment, as the associated costs are high relative to potential wages. However, we find that inter-group differences in commuting costs account for a much smaller fraction of inter-group employment disparities than do differences in other labor market factors such as the wage offer distribution and offer arrival rates.
期刊介绍:
Regional Science and Urban Economics facilitates and encourages high-quality scholarship on important issues in regional and urban economics. It publishes significant contributions that are theoretical or empirical, positive or normative. It solicits original papers with a spatial dimension that can be of interest to economists. Empirical papers studying causal mechanisms are expected to propose a convincing identification strategy.