RECENT INTRA-METROPOLITAN PATTERNS OF JOBS AND WORKERS: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE SPATIAL MISMATCH HYPOTHESIS

Abstract

Since the seminal work of John Kain in the 1960s, scholars have explored the spatial mismatch between suburban job opportunities and the residential segregation of low-income Black populations in the inner city. Since then, the spatial structure of U.S. metropolitan areas has undergone dynamic changes and reshaped the demographic landscape and economic geography, which have important implications for the spatial patterns of mismatch in the 21st century. Particularly, the movement of Black populations to the suburbs has the potential to perpetuate spatial mismatch if those newly suburbanized Black populations continue to be spatially segregated in suburbs apart from where jobs have relocated. Although previous studies provide evidence for continued residential segregation, it is yet unclear how it affects spatial patterns of mismatch for suburban Black populations as well as the changing geography of opportunity. In this dissertation, I examine the spatial patterns of mismatch with a particular focus on whether the spatial distributions in the 21st century continue to disadvantage the Black population in accessing job opportunities. I also estimate the differing relationship between the neighborhood job accessibility and labor market outcomes by the residence in the city and the suburb, availability of auto, and the level of residential segregation. By incorporating the geographic scale of segregation and inequality, the measures used in this dissertation captures the spatial interactions with neighboring areas that take into account the spatial clustering as well as the concentration of opportunities and disadvantages. The results reveal geographical evidence of a shift in the geography of spatial mismatch into the suburbs into which Black populations have predominantly moved since the 1980s, indicating that changes in urban structures contribute to the expansion of inequality of opportunities beyond the boundaries of the inner-city. Further, there is an increasing trend of within- neighborhood subarea inequality in both cities and the suburbs, which suggests a greater spatial heterogeneity at the local geographical level. The study concludes by arguing that the spatial mismatch is not disappearing from U.S. metropolitan areas. Rather, the geography of the spatial mismatch has merely shifted in such a way that the same pattern of neighborhood disadvantages now exists in the suburbs.