The relationship between individual employment probabilities and accessibility to matching jobs: A study of the Netherlands

The role of transport in providing people with access to employment opportunities has received considerable attention. Existing studies have primarily applied aggregate public transport or car job accessibility measures to examine the impact on employment probabilities of (sampled) disadvantaged groups in mainly metropolitan areas. We improve on these existing studies by combining national administrative employment micro datasets of the full working-age population of the Netherlands, segmented by educational level, with a novel composite public transport-and-bicycle accessibility measure to matching job opportunities and national vehicle registration data for the first time. This allows us to examine differential employment effects of job accessibility by public transport in combination with the bicycle for different educational groups at the national level. In our employment models, we control for endogeneity of both job accessibility and vehicle ownership in relation to employment status through an instrumental variable approach. The study finds that jobs for higher educated tend to be concentrated in and around the city centres, while jobs for the lower educated are more often located outside these prime accessibility areas, thereby reducing job accessibility among low-educated groups. The study further identifies that employment, in particular of low-educated individuals, is sensitive to higher levels of public transport-and-bicycle job accessibility, but in contrast with prior studies we also find that middle- and higher educated groups could benefit from improved job accessibility. The usage of detailed job accessibility measures and employment micro datasets of the full population thus seem essential to accurately assess the relationship between job accessibility and individual employment probabilities. These findings are important for policymakers in that they imply that more tailored transport strategies may increase the participation of especially lower educated groups in society and therewith the full utilization of the potential labour force.