Using micro data from the US Census, this paper tests the importance of the spatial isolation of minority and poverty households for youth employment in the largest US metropolitan areas. We first estimate a model relating youth employment probabilities to individual and family characteristics,...

This paper examines the importance of job access in explaining labor market outcomes for youth. The work sets forth a broader definition of 'access' which emphasizes the information links provided by social networks. Empirical analysis, based upon micro data from the public use sample and upon...

Theories about the importance of space in urban labor markets have emphasized the role of employment access, on the one hand, and neighborhood composition, on the other hand, in affecting employment outcomes. This paper presents an empirical analysis which considers both of these factors,...

Some networks may be more useful than others in affecting labor market outcomes. In particular, social contacts who are employed may be more useful in job referral than those who are not employed. Also, social networks containing non minority workers or male workers may have better and more...

Studies of the “stated preferences†of households generally report public and political opposition by urban commuters to congestion pricing. It is thought that this opposition inhibits or precludes tolls and pricing systems that would enhance efficiency in the use of scarce roadways....

This paper compares the level of spatial segregation by race or ethnicity with the level of spatial segregation by demographic group in two metropolitan areas with similar incomes and demographic compositions, but with very different racial proportions. We compare census tract data for the San...

Almost thirty years ago, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences asked John Meyer to organize an exploration of the links between transportation and poverty. During the spring of 1968, a dozen papers were commissioned, in collaboration with Harvard’s Program on Regional and Urban...

This paper considers residential segregation by race and by type of household in 1970 and 1980. The paper presents entropy indices of segregation for the San Francisco Bay Area and its five metropolitan areas. The methodology permits an investigation of the effects of group definition upon...

A recent expansion of the San Francisco Bay Area’s heavy rail system represents an exogenous change in the accessibility of inner-city minority communities to a concentrated suburban employment center. We evaluate this natural experiment by conducting a two-wave longitudinal survey of...