Principal
Investigator
/Author Name: Paul M. Ong
Address: 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
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 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
Previous Funding: 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
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
Project
Title: Measuring the Role of Transportation in
Facilitating the Welfare-to Work
Transition Final Report of Three-Year Study
1.
Summary of
Project
The 3-year project assesses the role of transportation in
facilitating welfare-to-work in three California counties: Los Angeles, Fresno,
and Alameda. Anecdotal evidence and preliminary research suggest that
transportation services are crucial to helping welfare recipients make a
successful transition from public assistance into the labor market; however,
relatively little is known about the relationship between welfare usage and
employment access and how this relationship varies across diverse counties. The
purpose of our study is to go beyond the effect of personal characteristics on
welfare usage and to examine the role of transportation in limiting and
facilitating welfare recipients’ access to jobs and employment and social
services. This project was supported by
multi-year grants from UCTC as well as grants from federal and state agencies
and private foundations.
The research addresses the following five principal
research questions:
a. Transportation access: Do welfare recipients have limited access to transportation?
b. Transportation and economic outcomes: Does access to transportation affect welfare
recipients’ ability to find and maintain employment?
c. 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?
d. 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?
The three case-study counties—Alameda, Fresno and Los
Angeles—provide a unique comparison across three different county types. Alameda and Los Angeles Counties are major
urban areas. Alameda County is located
in northern California and Los Angeles County is located in southern California. The highest concentration of welfare
recipients (40 percent of the state total) lives in Los Angeles (California
Department of Social Services, December 2001).
Despite an extensive transit network in Los Angeles, the share of
residents who commute by public transportation is only slightly higher than the
State average (1990 U.S. Census).
Alameda County is also home to a large share of the state’s caseload (3
percent), although much smaller than Los Angeles. In contrast to Los Angeles, however, Alameda had a more robust
economy during the late 1990s and, caseloads declined much faster than the
State average. Also, compared to other
counties in the State, Alameda is a more transit-oriented county. Ten percent of residents commute using
public transit, a figure twice as high as the State average.
The third county in this study, Fresno, is an agricultural-based county
located in central California. Fresno County
is an example of an area with a varied urban structure that includes a
medium-sized metropolitan area, small cities scattered throughout the county,
and rural areas. It is also a county
that is experiencing rapid population growth, has high welfare usage rates, a
racially and ethnically diverse population, and a population that is
overwhelmingly dependent on automobiles for commuting. Although only 4 percent of California’s welfare caseload live in Fresno
County, the Central Valley counties combined contain approximately 30 percent
or the state’s welfare recipients.
2. Overview of the Research and Tasks
To examine the five research questions, we used geographic
information systems (GIS) to map and calculate measures of employment and
transportation access for the three counties.
We used these data to develop profiles of welfare recipients and their
relative access to low-wage jobs, to public transportation, and to employment
services. We then used these measures
to model the relationship between “access” and two outcome measures – welfare
usage rates and employment rates.
Finally, for the institutional component of the study, we conducted a
survey of social service, transportation, and employment agencies in California
to determine the types of transportation programs they provided for welfare
recipients.
The study drew on data assembled from a variety of
sources. Local government agencies
provided administrative data for welfare recipients. These data included
addresses and were geocoded in order to assign each welfare recipient to a
block group. Using these administrative data, we analyzed the spatial
distribution of welfare recipients as well as the population characteristics
(race/ethnicity, age, household structure, and education). The welfare
administrative data were also matched to administrative data from the
California Employment Development Department (their Business Establishment
List) to identify employment rates among welfare recipients and to determine
the industrial distribution of their employment.
The data on low-wage jobs is from the American Business
information (ABI), a directory produced by a private vendor. The data includes
the number of jobs by industry and block group. Given the fact that most
welfare recipients are low-skilled women, we estimated the number of low-wage
feminized occupations based on employment data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics on the sex composition of occupations and an occupational and
industrial matrix developed by the California Employment Development
Department. Using these data, we measured job richness in neighborhoods (block
groups or census tracts).
Building from this measure of job access, we examined
welfare recipients’ relative access to low-wage jobs given their reliance on
existing transportation networks. Information on transit lines and bus stops is
collected from various local transit agencies. Metropolitan Transportation
Commission (MTC) for the Bay Area and the Southern California Association of Governments
(SCAG) provided a travel time matrix for Alameda and Los Angeles. These data
allowed us to calculate how far welfare recipients could travel by either auto
or public transportation within 30 minutes and the number of jobs available
within a 30-minute commute.
Local and state government agencies provided us with data on employment
and social service agencies and job training and educational institutions.
These data include the spatial locations of institutions and were geocoded. We
examined welfare recipients’ access to the locations of these
institutions.
3.
Key Findings
· The research suggests that the spatial mismatch hypothesis – the assertion that explains joblessness among African Africans in central cities as the result of their spatial separation from job opportunities in the suburbs – is less relevant to welfare recipients living in areas in which the urban structure does not fit the simple model of poor, central-city neighborhoods and distant, job-rich suburbs.
· 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.
· 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. Although they may have good access to public transit, welfare recipients in these neighborhoods may have difficulty sustaining long commutes to employment locations.
· Travel mode makes a large difference in welfare recipients’ ability to access employment. The data shows that 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.
· Outside metropolitan areas we find that welfare recipients are less likely to have adequate transit available and are, therefore, 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. The data do not show a positive correlation between proximity to community-level services and the employment rate and earnings of welfare recipients. This particular pattern may be due to a tendency by social services to locate in very low-income areas, where many of their most disadvantaged clients reside.
· 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. The availability of licensed care centers varies dramatically from one neighborhood to another. Recipients in areas with many licensed childcare slots are more likely to use licensed care, while recipients in areas with few slots are more likely to rely on unlicensed care.
c. Relationship between Access
to Transportation and Economic Outcomes
· In Fresno County, the relationship between job access and welfare usage rates for welfare recipients living in the urbanized area of the County is not statistically significant. Most welfare recipients living in the urbanized area do not face spatial barriers to employment since most live in relatively close proximity to job opportunities.
· In non-urbanized areas, welfare usage rates are higher, not lower, in job-rich neighborhoods. This is a counterintuitive finding that can be explained by the residential location of rural welfare recipients who tend to live in small towns near employment.
· 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.
c. Institutional
Response
· New sources of federal funds have encouraged interagency efforts to address the transportation needs of welfare participants.
· The divergent organizational goals, methods, and approaches of the participating agencies heavily influence these collaborative efforts. As a consequence, stakeholders may have difficulty moving beyond the narrow interests of their individual institutions to identify and plan for the transportation needs of welfare participants.
The
welfare-to-work analyses in Alameda, Fresno, and Los Angeles counties highlight
the relationship between the urban structure of counties and neighborhoods and
the transportation needs of welfare recipients. The findings suggest that county planners should carefully target
transportation policies and services to particular neighborhoods based on the
density of welfare recipients, the proximity of suitable employment
opportunities, and current levels of public transportation. With respect to transportation policies
themselves, we recommend that policies differ according to welfare recipient
density and employment density. We
propose the following policies and services for four neighborhood types.
(1) Job-Rich, High
Welfare-Density Neighborhoods.
Public transit is most
efficient in geographic areas with relatively high concentrations of origins
and destinations, in this case, neighborhoods with concentrations of low-income
riders and neighborhoods with concentrations of employment opportunities. Therefore, public transit will be most
effective in job-rich neighborhoods with high densities of welfare recipients
where recipients can travel to jobs and other destinations within a reasonable
length of time. In these neighborhoods,
policymakers should focus on enhancing existing public transportation
services. Enhancements might include
adding bus lines in areas with limited service: increasing capacity by adding
additional vehicles and shortening headways; and adding off-peak service to
better accommodate night and weekend work schedules as well as non-work
travel.
(2) Job-Poor, High Welfare
Density
In many job-poor neighborhoods, even if welfare
recipients could easily walk to a bus stop and board a bus, they would not get
to their destinations within a reasonable amount of time. Suburban employment
centers, such as the Warner Center in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley and
industrial employment centers on the urban fringe provide potential entry-level
employment opportunities for recipients, but those locations are often located
great distances from where concentrations of recipients live. For those recipients, it is important to
establish services that ease the burden of long-distance commutes. In these neighborhoods, welfare recipients
would benefit from programs to increase their access to automobiles and
programs that provide non-fixed route transportation services. Welfare recipients in these neighborhoods
would also benefit from public policies that are not directly transportation
related but may serve to improve employment access among welfare
recipients. For example, local economic
development can be used to increase economic opportunities in areas of
concentrated poverty.
(3) Job-Rich, Low Welfare-Density
Neighborhoods
In these neighborhoods, policymakers might examine the
feasibility of enhancing housing mobility for welfare recipients. This approach should include programs to
make it easier for recipients to move close to employment centers if low-cost
housing is available, or if none is available, establishing programs that
encourage developers to provide new low-cost housing.
(4) Job-Poor, Low Welfare Recipient Density
In job-poor neighborhoods where there are few welfare
recipients, it is likely that cars are the best and most efficient transportation
option. For example, in the
non-urbanized areas in Fresno County or the outer suburbs in the northern part
of Los Angeles County, both jobs and welfare recipients are less concentrated,
making travel much more difficult for those without access to automobiles. The data show that spatial access to
employment remains relatively high among welfare recipients living in these
areas since many have reliable access to personal vehicles. In contrast, although they are few in
numbers, transit-dependent welfare recipients living in these areas have only
limited access to employment opportunities within a reasonable commute
distance. From a policy perspective,
therefore, the principal challenge to policymakers is how best to serve the
transit-dependent rural population who are few in number and widely dispersed
throughout the county. While perhaps
politically problematic, facilitating access to reliable automobiles may be the
most cost-effective approach for these welfare recipients.
Moreover, access to automobiles among those with cars may
still be problematic. For example, most
Fresno welfare recipients commute by car; however, many do not have unlimited
access to reliable vehicles since many borrow vehicles or carpool. Also, many welfare recipients share vehicles
with other adults in the household and, therefore, cannot use cars whenever
they may need. Finally, many welfare
recipients drive old and unreliable cars and have difficulty maintaining and
insuring their vehicles. These
auto-related problems may make the daily commute to work problematic.
Finally,
to implement carefully planned and geographically
targeted transportation programs, agencies and organizations will have to
engage in successful collaborative efforts, working together to meet the transportation
needs of welfare recipients. As the
research shows, these collaborations are difficult to achieve since agencies often enter this policy arena
with very different perspectives, shaped in part by the same federal policies
that mandate collaboration as well as the unique cultures of their agencies or
organizations. Therefore, in planning
for the transportation needs of welfare participants, planners and policymakers
must implement policies and strategies that enable stakeholders to step beyond
their individual organizational identities and to embrace the objectives of the
group or collaborative.
One strategy may be to create more fully participatory planning processes that attempt to equalize power among stakeholders. Other approaches might enable administrators from agencies to overcome their divergent perspectives. These strategies might include increasing the flexibility in the use of federal funds, more careful documentation of the transportation needs and behavior of welfare recipients, and the development of leadership that rests on individuals who are committed – first and foremost – to improving the lives of welfare participants and who are able see beyond organizational opportunities to gain access to additional resources.
5. References
a. Publications and Journal Articles Based on
the Research
Blumenberg, Evelyn and Daniel
Baldwin Hess. (in
preparation) “Measuring the Role of
Transportation in Facilitating the Welfare-to-Work Transition: Evidence from
Three California Counties.” For
Presentation and publication Transportation Research Board.
Blumenberg,
Evelyn and Kimiko Shiki. (under
review) “How the Other Half Lives:
Welfare Recipients, Public Transit, and Access to employment Outside of Large Urban
Centers.” Journal of Poverty: Innovations on Social, Political &
Economic Inequalities.
Blumenberg, Evelyn and Kimiko
Shiki (under review) “Welfare Usage, Employment Rates, and
Spatial Access to Employment: The Case
of Welfare Recipients in Fresno County, California.” Environment and Planning C
Houston, Douglas
and Paul Ong (in preparation)
"Child-care Usage Patterns among Welfare Recipients."
Ong, Paul and
Douglas Houston (accepted for
publication) "Transit, Employment, and Women on Welfare." Urban
Geography.
Ong, Paul. 2002.
"Car Ownership and Welfare-to-Work." Journal of Policy
Analysis and Management. Vol. 21,
No. 2, pp 255-268.
Dissertation Supported by Access to Los Angeles Data:
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.
Thesis Supported by Access to Alameda Data:
Nonaka, Katsumi (UCLA):
"Employment, Welfare Recipients and Community Services in Alameda County,
California"
b. Conferences and Presentations
University of California, Fresno
Center, April 2002. “Job Access,
Transportation and Welfare Reform in Fresno County,” presentation to directors
and administrators of county agencies and organizations.
University of California, Berkeley,
February 15, 2002. “En-gendering Effective Planning: Transportation Policy and Low-Income Women,” 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.
Transportation Research Board,
Washington, D.C., January 2002.
“En-gendering Effective Planning:
Transportation Policy and Low-Income Women,” presentation at the Annual
Meeting of the Transportation Research Board.
Symposium on Redefining, Reevaluating
and Reinventing Transit, Public Policy Program, UCLA Extension, Lake Arrowhead,
CA, October 14, 2001. Paper presented: “Beyond Transit Justice, Lessons from
Welfare Reform for Transportation Policies and the Poor."
Wagner School and
Asian/Pacific/American Studies, New York University, March 20, 2001. Paper
presented: "Urban Structure and Social Policy."
Urban Studies and Ethnic Studies,
U.C. San Diego, California, March 7, 2001. Paper presented: “Urban Structure
and Social Policy."
Conference on "Wanted: Solutions
for America," sponsored by the Pew Partnership, San Diego, California,
March 3, 2001. Paper presented: "Urban Structure and Social Policy.
Transportation Research Board
Conference, Washington, D.C., January 2001.
Paper presented: “Cars, Buses and Jobs: Welfare Recipients and
Employment Access in Los Angeles.”
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.”
CalWORKS & Transportation
Hearing, Assembly Human Services Committee, Sacramento, CA, June 29, 2000.
Welfare Policy Research Project
Policy Maker Forum, Sacramento, CA, June 15, 2000. Paper presented: "Potential Employment Barriers for CalWORKs
Recipients."
Journey to Work: UCLA Symposium on Welfare Reform and
Transportation, April 2000. Paper
presented: “Access to Jobs by Welfare
Recipients: The Role of Public
Transportation. Los Angeles.”
Transportation Seminar Series,
University of California Transportation Center, Institute of Transportation
Studies, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, March, 2000. Paper presented: “Transportation and Welfare Reform.”
UCLA/LA Marginal Majority Workshop
Series, UCLA College of Letters and Science and the Lewis Center for Regional
Policy Studies, February 2000. Paper
presented: “Transportation Issues in
Welfare-to-Work Programs.”
Transportation Research Board
Conference, Washington, D.C., January 2000.
Paper presented: “Transportation
and the Social Implications of Changing Employment Practices.”