Poverty concentration, job access, and employment outcomes

Existing literature suggests that both access to jobs and poverty concentration can affect poor job seekers' employment outcomes, but no research has tested the two factors together or examined how their effects interact. In this article, we examine the effects of job accessibility in places of various degrees of poverty concentrations, focusing on the employment status and commute distance of the poor. Using the Los Angeles metropolitan area as the case study, we find that spatial access does not explain unequal employment status of the poor: the association between access and employment status is insignificant in almost all places regardless of the poverty rates. Poor job seekers cannot take advantage of proximity to jobs even if they live in low-poverty places. The only exceptions are the places that experienced increases in both poverty rates and job access, where the estimation of job accessibility's effects tends to be upwardly biased. The association between job accessibility and commute distance is significant in places with low to medium poverty rates, meaning that for poor workers who live in low-poverty neighborhoods, proximity to jobs can reduce their commute distance. For those who live in high-poverty places, proximity to jobs does not significantly affect their commute distances. These findings challenge the optimistic expectations of housing dispersion programs, at least their effects on employment status.