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Geographic Inequalities in Accessibility of Essential Services

Author

Listed:
  • Almeida, Vanda

    (OECD)

  • Hoffmann, Claire

    (OECD)

  • Königs, Sebastian

    (OECD)

  • Moreno-Monroy, Ana Isabel

    (OECD)

  • Salazar-Lozada, Mauricio

    (OECD)

  • Terrero-Dávila, Javier

    (OECD)

Abstract

People's ability to access essential services is key to their labour market and social inclusion. An important dimension of accessibility is physical accessibility, but little cross-country evidence exists on how close people live to the services facilities they need. This paper helps to address this gap, focusing on three types of essential services: Public Employment Services, primary schools and Early Childhood Education and Care. It collects and maps data on the location of these services for a selection of OECD countries and links them with data on population and transport infrastructure. This allows to compute travel times to the nearest service facility and to quantify disparities in accessibility at the regional level. The results highlight substantial inequalities in accessibility of essential services across and within countries. Although large parts of the population can easily reach these services in most countries, some people are relatively underserved. This is particularly the case in non-metropolitan and low-income regions. At the same time, accessibility seems to be associated with the potential demand for these services once accounting for other regional economic and demographic characteristics.

Suggested Citation

  • Almeida, Vanda & Hoffmann, Claire & Königs, Sebastian & Moreno-Monroy, Ana Isabel & Salazar-Lozada, Mauricio & Terrero-Dávila, Javier, 2024. "Geographic Inequalities in Accessibility of Essential Services," IZA Discussion Papers 16958, IZA Network @ LISER.
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16958
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Steven Simoens & Jeremy Hurst, 2006. "The Supply of Physician Services in OECD Countries," OECD Health Working Papers 21, OECD Publishing.
    2. Lewis Dijkstra & Hugo Poelman & Paolo Veneri, 2019. "The EU-OECD definition of a functional urban area," OECD Regional Development Working Papers 2019/11, OECD Publishing.
    3. Herwig Immervoll & Carlo Knotz, 2018. "How demanding are activation requirements for jobseekers," OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers 215, OECD Publishing.
    4. Anne Lauringson & Marius Lüske, 2021. "Institutional set-up of active labour market policy provision in OECD and EU countries: Organisational set-up, regulation and capacity," OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers 262, OECD Publishing.
    5. Cylus, Jonathan & Papanicolas, Irene, 2015. "An analysis of perceived access to health care in Europe: How universal is universal coverage?," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 119(9), pages 1133-1144.
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    Cited by:

    1. Sebastian Königs & Javier Terrero-Dávila, 2025. "Who climbs the income ladder?: Cross-country evidence on income mobility from tax record data," OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers 322, OECD Publishing.

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    Keywords

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    JEL classification:

    • H00 - Public Economics - - General - - - General
    • I24 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Inequality
    • J01 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics: General
    • O18 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Urban, Rural, Regional, and Transportation Analysis; Housing; Infrastructure
    • R12 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity; Interregional Trade (economic geography)

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