BUILDING ON SPATIAL MISMATCH: A NEW REVIEW OF LITERATURE AND AN EXAMPLE CASE STUDY

Abstract

Barriers to employment exist at different levels for minority groups, especially those that are residentially segregated. Many studies have examined these barriers, including a physical separation between the residential location and the available job opportunities since John Kain’s 1968 Spatial Mismatch Hypothesis. However, recent studies of modal mismatch, racial mismatch, and skill or language mismatch, have been identified with significant impact on accessible employment without being included in a comprehensive review of mismatch literature. This research provides an updated literature review of Spatial Mismatch. It also includes a case study of a little-studied region, Dallas – Fort Worth metropolitan area. The case study found that spatial accessibility is not significant to unemployment rates for the DFW area, however, they are significant when reviewing Dallas county alone, implying a sensitivity directly to the chosen area of study. Where Spatial Mismatch may be unfounded for a larger area, inequities of access may exist for smaller divisions of area and in need of intervening policies or programs.