Spatial Mismatch: Beyond Black and White

• In Event: 095 - Section on Community and Urban Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 11. Transportation and Spatial Mismatch

Abstract

Proximity to job opportunities has been theorized to have large implications for employment outcomes, and may potentially contribute to racial disparities in labor force participation. However, there is little documentation of spatial mismatch—defined as the disequilibrium between residency and employment opportunities—by nativity and race/ethnicity, namely among Hispanic and Asian subgroups. The majority of work on this subject has examined spatial mismatch and its implications among blacks and whites, or failed to disaggregate among large panethnic categories, making it unclear the extent to which other groups experience this phenomenon. This paper examines spatial mismatch among Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Asian Indian, Chinese, Filipino, and Vietnamese U.S. residents. Indices of dissimilarity are estimated using data on the number of jobs across zip codes from the 2010 Zip Code Business Patterns dataset, and racial composition across zip codes from the 2010 U.S. censuses and the American Community Survey 5 year file (2007-2011). This index can be interpreted as the number of jobs that would have to relocate to eliminate any geographic imbalance for specific racial/ethnic groups. Findings indicate that various subgroups experience different levels of spatial mismatch, and that estimates for panethnic categories obscure these differences, especially for Asian Americans. For example, while 32 percent of jobs would need to relocate to eliminate mismatch with the panethnic category, 39 percent of jobs would need to relocate to eliminate mismatch with Vietnamese residents, a difference of 7 percent.

Author

• Janeria Alexis Easley, Princeton University