Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP6198
Authors: Laurent Gobillon; Harris Selod
Abstract: In this paper, we investigate how residential segregation and bad physical access to jobs contribute to urban unemployment in the Paris region. We first survey the general mechanisms according to which residential segregation and spatial mismatch can have adverse labour-market outcomes. We then discuss the extent of the problem with the help of relevant descriptive statistics computed from the 1999 Census of the Population and from the 2000 General Transport Survey. Finally, we estimate the effect of indices of segregation computed at the neighbourhood and municipality levels, as well as job accessibility indices on the labour-market transitions out of unemployment using the 1990-2002 Labour Force Survey. Our results show that neighbourhood segregation is a key factor that prevents unemployed workers from finding a job. These results are robust to potential location endogeneity biases.
Keywords: residential segregation; sensitivity analysis; spatial mismatch; urban unemployment
JEL Codes: J64; R14
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Neighborhood segregation (R23) | Reduced employability (J68) |
| Job accessibility indices (J68) | Labor market transitions (J63) |