Influence of Transit Accessibility to Jobs on the Employability of the Welfare Recipients

Much research has been done on transportation accessibility of the central-city minorities and its impacts on income, automobile ownership, and employment. The proportion of people using transit for any purpose in the U.S. is so minuscule that most of these studies consider accessibility to jobs by automobile as general transportation accessibility. However, few studies reveal that transit accessibility to jobs could be an important factor for the employment outcomes of the welfare recipients as they are dependent on public transit, and not on automobile. This study investigates the impacts of transit accessibility to jobs on the employability of the welfare recipients in Broward County, Florida, expressed by a surrogate variable 'length of stay in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program by the welfare recipients' and measured in 'number of months.' The study develops an OLS regression model that includes both the aggregate data at traffic analysis zone (TAZ) level and disaggregate data at individual welfare recipient's level. To these, the variable transit accessibility to jobs is added, and its contribution is examined statistically. The study uses an ArcMap GIS for geocoding the welfare recipients' addresses in each specific TAZ, and then relates the TAZ features to those of the individual welfare recipients by spatially joining the maps. The study finds that most of the welfare recipients live in the TAZs associated with high accessibility indices instead of concentrating only in the inner city areas. Some also reside in the TAZs attached to low accessibility indices. It finds that the people living in accessible-rich TAZs stay shorter period of time in the TANF program, and vice versa. It leads to the inference that transit accessibility to jobs of a TAZ has inverse impacts on the employability of the welfare recipients living in that specific TAZ. The study also finds that the women and the U.S. citizens have direct effects while the blacks and the neighborhood quality variable the ratio of number of vehicles to number of households at TAZ level has significant inverse effects on the employability of the welfare recipients.