Why do the poor live in cities? The role of public transportation ✩

By Edward L. Glaeser, Matthew E. Kahn, J. Rappaport. 2008

896 citations recorded by the source corpus.

More than 19 percent of people in American central cities are poor. In suburbs, just 7.5 percent of people live in poverty. The income elasticity of demand for land is too low for urban poverty to come from wealthy individuals' wanting to live where land is cheap (the traditional explanation of urban poverty). A significant income elasticity for land exists only because the rich eschew apartment living, and that elasticity is still too low to explain the poor's urbanization. The urbanization of poverty comes mainly from better access to public transportation in central cities.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Sociology and Political Science, Transportation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/202073faa94b40b6fc2e9cbba37e1562a4572af2

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Citations in the corpus

Natural amenities, neighborhood dynamics, and persistence in the spatial distribution of income (2013, background): “…(Aaronson, 2001; Guerrieri, Hartley, and Hurst, 2013), transportation technology or infrastructure (LeRoy and Sonstelie, 1983; Baum-Snow, 2007; Glaeser, Kahn, and Rappaport, 2008), African American migration to cities (Boustan, 2010), or a combination of factors (Kolko, 2Other theoretical…”
Income Growth and the Distributional Effects of Urban Spatial Sorting (2019, neutral): “Appendix C.4 features maps of New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Boston, and Las Vegas where tracts are classified as downtown and suburban based on our definition.”
Urban revival in America (2020, background): “This accords with evidence that transit accessibility plays a role in the urbanization of low-income households (LeRoy and Sonstelie, 1983; Glaeser et al., 2008).”
The Geographic Distribution of Political Preferences (2010, background): “…affordable housing from the industrial revolution remained (Glaeser et al. 2005), along with some of the public transportation networks that eventually came into place, allowing the poor to reach service and other low-skill jobs without the expense of automobile ownership (Glaeser et al. 2007).”
Toward Equitable Transit: Examining Transit Accessibilityand Social Need in Toronto, Canada, 1996-2006 (2013, background): “Glaeser et al (2006) examine the role that transport plays in residential sorting of rich and poor residents of large cities, finding that better public transportation in central cities explains much of this pattern.”
The Causes and Consequences of Land Use Regulation: Evidence from Greater Boston (2009, neutral): “3 Gyourko and Saiz (2006) estimate that the cost of construction is less than 100 dollars per square foot in Boston and the average home in our sample is 1800 square feet.”
Disproportionately higher exposure to urban heat in lower-income neighborhoods: a multi-city perspective (2019, background): “…generally higher due to the physical mechanisms involved in its formation (i.e. higher degree of urbanization, lower vegetation cover, higher anthropogenic heat flux, more built-up structures with higher thermal mass, etc)—or in the suburbs where UHI is less intense (Glaeser et al 2008, OECD 2018).”
Trade Shocks and the Provision of Local Public Goods (2017, background): “…For public transport, welfare, and housing, there is again evidence that these services are more heavily used by lower-income residents, suggesting that as local incomes decline, demand for these services is likely to increase (Glaeser et al., 2008; Katz et al., 2001; Olsen and Barton, 1983).”
Why Has Regional Convergence in the U.S. Stopped (2012, neutral): “Second, Glaeser et al. (2008) shows convincing evidence that the income elasticity of plot size is far below 1.”