Public transit access and the changing spatial distribution of poverty

This article examines whether access to public transportation plays a significant role in determining the spatial distribution of poverty in a metropolitan area. Our empirical strategy relies on long-term changes in poverty and access to bus transit at the neighborhood level in the Atlanta metropolitan area. We estimate the effect of bus transit access on poverty using fixed effects models to control for time-invariant unobservable characteristics. Furthermore, we undertake several robustness checks using a combination of instrumental variable regression, subsample analysis, and propensity score matching. Our results indicate that, on average, after controlling for neighborhood characteristics, census tracts with better access to public bus transportation have a higher proportion of low-income households – in both the central city and the suburbs. Thus, policies that improve access to transit in underserved areas can plausibly expand residential opportunities for the poor and reduce spatial inequities in urban centers.