Principal Investigator

Paul M. Ong

UCLA SPPSR
The Ralph and Goldy Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies
3320 Public Policy Building
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1656

Telephone: 310/825-8775
Fax:  310/825-1575
Email:            pmong@ucla.edu

Other Key Participants:                  

Evelyn Blumenberg

UCLA SPPSR
The Ralph and Goldy Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies
3320 Public Policy Building
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1656

Telephone: 310/825-1803
Fax:  310/825-1575
Email:            eblumenb@ucla.edu

Other Key Participants:                  Brian D. Taylor

                                    UCLA SPPSR

UCLA SPPSR
The Ralph and Goldy Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies
3320 Public Policy Building
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1656

Telephone: 310/825-7442
Fax:  310/825-1575
Email:            btaylor@ucla.edu

Funded by:                   UCTC Year 12 Research Grant No. 65V430 (Amendment 2)

Measuring the Role of Transportation in Facilitating the Welfare-to Work Transition (Year 2)

Principal Investigator:  Paul M. Ong

Co- Principal Investigators:

Evelyn Blumenberg and Brian D. Taylor

Previous and

Other Funding:            UCTC Year 11 Research Grant No.  DTRS95-G-0009, USDOT 28816

Measuring the Role of Transportation in Facilitating the Welfare-to Work Transition (Year 1)

                                                Principal Investigator:  Evelyn Blumenberg

                                                Co- Principal Investigators:  Paul M. Ong and Brian D. Taylor

                                    UCTC Year 13 Research Grant No. 65V430, UCB Fund 18220

Measuring the Role of Transportation in Facilitating the Welfare-to Work Transition (Year 3)

                                                Principal Investigator:  Paul M. Ong

Co- Principal Investigators:              Evelyn Blumenberg and

Brian D. Taylor

Project Title:            Measuring the Role of Transportation in Facilitating the Welfare-to Work

                        (Year 2 of 3-year research project)

1.                  Overview of the Research and Tasks

Anecdotal evidence and preliminary research suggest that transportation services are crucial to transitioning welfare recipients into the labor market; however, empirical research on the relationship between transportation and welfare use is limited and dated. Welfare reform since 1996 has created new conditions and challenges that have potentially altered that relationship between employment and transportation. The research addresses the following five principal research questions:

  1. Transportation access: Do welfare recipients have limited access to transportation? 
  2. Transportation and economic outcomes: Does access to transportation affect welfare

recipients’ ability to find and maintain employment?

  1. Access to social services: Do welfare recipients have limited access to social services?

And, related, what is the relationship between welfare usage and recipients’ access to

other services such as employment and social services?

  1. Institutional Response: How have agencies and other organizations provided for the

transportation needs of welfare recipients?

e.       Transportation mode: If limited access to transportation reduces work behavior among

welfare recipients, then what forms of transportation services would improve recipients’

ability to transition into the labor market?

This research project addresses these questions through a multi-year, multi-county effort that was supported by grants from UCTC, federal and state agencies and private foundations. The analysis focused on employment outcomes as a function of population and labor market characteristics and access to employment, including access to transportation.  This report covers the project’s second year (UCTC year 12) activities, which included assembling and analyzing administrative data on the geographic distribution of jobs in low wage firms and measures of access to transportation. With a previous grant, agreements with the State of California and the County of Los Angeles established a secured data facility allowing construction of baseline data for Los Angeles, including measures of job access incorporating travel time by public transit and private car.  During the second year, we updated the Los Angeles data, analyzed the role of transit access on early employment outcomes in Los Angeles. During this period, we also constructed and geocoded baseline data for Alameda County, California and worked with the Public Health Institute to analyze its Alameda survey to explore the relationship between transportation access and employment.  We were able to reach an agreement with Fresno County CA's Board of Supervisors for access to data for that county.  We signed an agreement with the Fresno County Department of Employment and Temporary Assistance for access to confidential data.  We received and geocoded transportation data from the area's three major transit systems -- Fresno Area Express (FAX), Clovis Transit, and Fresno County Rural Transit Agency (FCRTA).  These data have been complemented with data from the 1990 U.S. census (STF3) on travel mode and average travel time by block group.  We completed some initial spatial analysis for Fresno County and Alameda County.

2.         Key Findings

The following are the key findings from the second-year activities, some of which are preliminary and/or based on work initiated during the first year of the project. (The activities, findings and recommendations for the entire project are listed in the Year 3 (UCTC year 13) report.)

a.  Spatial Access to Transportation

·        While employment is growing more rapidly in the suburbs than in the central city, there are still high concentrations of employment located in central city areas adjacent to low-income residential areas.

·        In the larger urban areas such as Los Angeles and Alameda counties, some recipients live in job-rich neighborhoods and have good access to employment even if they are transit dependent.  However, other welfare recipients live in job-poor neighborhoods. 

·        Travel mode makes a large difference in welfare recipients’ ability to access employment.  Most jobs are accessible within a 30-minute commute in a private vehicle.  In contrast, welfare recipients who rely on public transit, even in the best of conditions, have access to far fewer jobs than those who drive.

·        Most welfare recipients have reasonable access to transit lines and bus stops.  The one exception is the non-urbanized areas of Fresno County where demand-responsive service compensates for the lack of fixed-route transit; consequently, welfare recipients are more likely to depend on automobiles.

·        While the urban structure of counties determines the types of neighborhoods found within counties, neighborhoods themselves are the best geographic unit for analyzing the access welfare recipients have to both jobs and transportation.

b.   Spatial Access to Employment Services

·        The majority of recipients of Alameda County live within a reasonable distance to non-profit community-based organizations (CBOs), and the recipients needing employment-related assistance tend to have better geographic access.  In this sense, recipients in Alameda do not encounter a spatial mismatch with respect to community-level services. 

·        Access to childcare is an important component of the effort to move recipients into employment. In Los Angeles County, usage of childcare is highly correlated with level of employment. Proximity to childcare services affects the choices of types of services. 

c.      Relationship between Access to Transportation and Economic Outcomes

·        In non-urbanized Fresno County, employment rates and job access are positively related and rural welfare recipients are more likely than urban welfare recipients to be employed.

·        In urbanized areas of Los Angeles, car ownership increases the probability of being employed.  This relationship holds after controlling for the endogeneity of car ownership.  High insurance premium in minority and poor neighborhoods is a barrier to car ownership.

·        For recipients without a car in the urbanized areas of Los Angeles, a high level of nearby transit service makes a moderate, but statistically significant, contribution to increasing the probability of employment and transit usage.  However, most transit users face multiple problems, including overcrowded buses and infrequent services.

3.  References

a.  Publications and Journal Articles Based on the Research (Some started in year one and/or completed in year three)

Dissertation Supported by Access to Los Angeles Data:s

Kawabata, Mizuki (Massachusetts Institute of Technology):  "Urban Spatial Structure: Job Access and Employment Opportunities for Low-Skilled Autoless Workers in U.S. Metropolitan Areas"

-Mizuki Kawabata won her department's 2002 "Outstanding Ph.D. Dissertation Award."  Her dissertation, "Access to Jobs: Transportation Barriers Faced by Low-Skilled Autoless Workers in U.S. Metropolitan Areas," explores and quantifies the importance of accessibility to job opportunities in employment outcomes for disadvantaged workers without autos in U.S. metropolitan areas. In order to conduct the empirical analysis for welfare recipients without autos in Los Angeles, she worked at the Ralph & Goldy Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies at UCLA as a visiting researcher in October 2001, and used the survey of CalWORKs Transportation Needs and Assessment maintained by the Lewis Center.

            b.  Conferences and Presentations

Conferences Attended:

Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning Conference, Atlanta, Ga., November 2000.  Paper

      presented:  "Planning for the Transportation Needs of Welfare Recipients: Barriers to

      Interagency Collaboration."

Transportation Research Board Conference, Washington, D.C., January 2001.  Paper presented:

      "Cars, Buses and Jobs: Welfare Recipients and Employment Access in Los Angeles."

Presentations:

2002,  "En-gendering Effective Planning:  Transportation Policy and Low-Income Women,"

      invited presentation as part of the Transportation Seminar Series, University of California

      Transportation Center, Institute of Transportation Studies, Department of Civil and

      Environmental Engineering,  University of California, Berkeley, February 15, 2002.

-2002,  "En-gendering Effective Planning: Transportation Policy and Low-Income Women,"

      presentation at the Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board, Washington, D.C.,

      January.