Can Boosting Minority Car-Ownership Rates Narrow Inter-Racial Employment Gaps?

In this paper, we assess whether boosting minority car-ownership rates would narrow inter-racial employment rate differentials. We pursue two empirical strategies. First, we explore whether the effect of auto ownership on the probability of being employed is greater for more segregated groups of workers. Exploiting the fact that African-Americans are considerably more segregated from whites than are Latinos, we estimate car-employment effects for blacks, Latinos, and whites and test whether these effects are largest for more segregated groups. Second, we use data at the level of the metropolitan area to test whether the car-employment effect for blacks relative to that for whites increases with the degree of black relative isolation from employment opportunities. We find the strongest car effects for blacks, followed by Latinos, and then whites. Moreover, this ordering is statistically significant. We also find that the relative car-employment effect for blacks is largest in metropolitan areas where the relative isolation of blacks from employment opportunities is the most severe. Our empirical estimates indicate that raising minority car-ownership rates to the white car ownership rate would eliminate 45 percent of the black-white employment rate differential and 17 percent of the comparable Latinbo-white differential.

[1]  S. Raphael,et al.  Car ownership, employment, and earnings , 2002 .

[2]  Lawrence H. Summers,et al.  Tax policy and the economy , 1989 .

[3]  Harry J. Holzer,et al.  The Spatial Mismatch Hypothesis: What Has the Evidence Shown? , 1991 .

[4]  Edward L. Glaeser,et al.  The Rise and Decline of the American Ghetto , 1997, Journal of Political Economy.

[5]  T. Smeeding,et al.  The EITC: Expectation, Knowledge, Use, and Economic and Social Mobility , 2000, National Tax Journal.

[6]  S. Harrington,et al.  Race, Redlining, and Automobile Insurance Prices , 1998 .

[7]  Richard W. Martin.  The Adjustment of Black Residents to Metropolitan Employment Shifts: How Persistent Is Spatial Mismatch? , 2001 .

[8]  Leslie E. Papke.  What Do We Know about Enterprise Zones? , 1993, Tax Policy and the Economy.

[9]  David L. Sjoquist,et al.  The spatial mismatch hypothesis: A review of recent studies and their implications for welfare reform , 1998 .

[10]  Richard Arnott,et al.  Economic Theory and the Spatial Mismatch Hypothesis , 1998 .

[11]  I. Ayres,et al.  Race and Gender Discrimination in Bargaining for a New Car , 1995 .

[12]  D. Massey.  American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass , 1993 .

[13]  David L. Sjoquist,et al.  Work search and travel among white and black youth. , 1994 .

[14]  M. Stoll,et al.  Within cities and suburbs: Racial residential concentration and the spatial distribution of employment opportunities across sub-metropolitan areas , 2000 .

[15]  P. S. Hu,et al.  Summary of Travel Trends: 1995 Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey , 1992 .

[16]  S. Raphael.  Inter and Intra-Ethnic Comparisons of the Central City Suburban Youth Employment Differential: Evidence from the Oakland Metropolitan Area , 1997 .

[17]  Nancy M. Somerick,et al.  Closed doors, opportunities lost: The continuing costs of housing discrimination , 1996 .

[18]  John D. Kasarda,et al.  Urban Industrial Transition and the Underclass , 1989 .

[19]  M. Pugh.  BARRIERS TO WORK: THE SPATIAL DIVIDE BETWEEN JOBS AND WELFARE RECIPIENTS IN METROPOLITAN AREAS , 1998 .

[20]  K. Ihlanfeldt,et al.  THE SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION OF BLACK EMPLOYMENT BETWEEN THE CENTRAL CITY AND THE SUBURBS , 1996 .

[21]  Ted Mouw.  Job Relocation and the Racial Gap in Unemployment in Detroit and Chicago, 1980 to 1990 , 2000, American Sociological Review.

[22]  Paul M. Ong,et al.  Work and automobile ownership among welfare recipients , 1996 .

[23]  M. Hughes.  A mobility strategy for improving opportunity , 1995 .

[24]  Bruce A. Weinberg.  Black Residential Centralization and the Spatial Mismatch Hypothesis , 2000 .

[25]  Matthew E. Kahn,et al.  Why Do the Poor Live in Cities? , 2000 .

[26]  Chad Shirley,et al.  Alternate Route: Toward Efficient Urban Transportation , 1998 .

[27]  M. Stoll,et al.  Spatial Job Search, Spatial Mismatch, and the Employment and Wages of Racial and Ethnic Groups in Los Angeles , 1999 .

[28]  S. Raphael.  The Spatial Mismatch Hypothesis and Black Youth Joblessness: Evidence from the San Francisco Bay Area* , 1998 .

[29]  I. Luckey.  : American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass , 1995 .

[30]  John F. Kain,et al.  The Spatial Mismatch Hypothesis: Three Decades Later , 1992 .

[31]  H. Holzer,et al.  Spatial factors and the employment of blacks at the firm level , 1996 .

[32]  Thomas M. Shapiro,et al.  Black Wealth, White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality. , 1995 .

[33]  P. Goldberg.  Dealer Price Discrimination in New Car Purchases: Evidence from the Consumer Expenditure Survey , 1996, Journal of Political Economy.

[34]  M. Stoll,et al.  Racial Differences in Spatial Job Search Patterns: Exploring the Causes and Consequences* , 2000 .