Within cities and suburbs: Racial residential concentration and the spatial distribution of employment opportunities across sub-metropolitan areas

This article examines and compares the spatial distributions of new jobs an d people across sub-metropolitan areas for Atlanta, Boston, Detroit, and Lo s Angeles. The jobs data come from the Multi-City Study, of Urban Inequalit y and the data on people come front the U.S. Bureau of the Census. The resu lts indicate that less-educated people, public assistance recipients, and e specially poor females with children mostly reside in areas heavily populat ed by minorities where the availability of less-skilled jobs is quite low: while the availability of these jobs relative to less-educated people in su burban areas heavily populated by whites is high. Large fractions of the le ss-skilled jobs in these metropolitan areas are not accessible by public tr ansit. Further more, there is significant variation within both central cit ies and suburbs in the ethnic composition of residents and in less-skilled job availability The ability of various minority groups to gain employment in each area depends heavily on the ethnic conmposition of the particular a rea. (C) 2000 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.