Neighborhood Time Tax: Race, Poverty, and the Cost of Access in New York City

• In Event: Spatial Inequality

Abstract

Prior research demonstrates that predominantly Black neighborhoods have fewer essential services and that poor households pay higher prices for goods—the "ghetto tax." This study extends these findings by examining temporal costs: the time burden residential location imposes on accessing daily needs. Using Google Maps API data to calculate walking time to ATMs, libraries, bus stops, subway stations, grocery stores, and employment centers across 2,168 census tracts in New York City, we construct a composite "neighborhood time tax" measure and employ multilevel models with census tracts nested within community districts. Four key findings emerge. First, predominantly Black neighborhoods face significantly elevated time costs—each standard deviation increase in percent Black associates with 26 additional minutes of daily access time. Second, poverty amplifies racial disparities specifically in Black neighborhoods: predominantly Black tracts in high-poverty contexts face approximately 70 additional minutes compared to low-Black-composition tracts, while Black composition shows minimal relationship with time costs in low-poverty contexts. Third, this inequality operates through nested geographic scales—residing in a predominantly Black district imposes an additional 40-minute penalty beyond tract-level composition. Fourth, spatial distribution matters more than aggregate resource availability: average distance strongly predicts time costs while amenity density shows weaker effects. Critically, spatial mechanisms (establishment density and distance) explain poverty's amplifying effect, but substantial racial penalties persist, suggesting infrastructure deficits beyond spatial access. These findings reveal that time-based measures detect accessibility inequalities that establishment density counts miss, demonstrating how spatial arrangements structure the temporal resources residents have available to pursue mobility and well-being.

Authors

• Linsey Nicole Edwards, New York University

• Kevin Wells, New York University