Chicago Policy Review, January 8, 2018: How public bus routes can deconcentrate poverty and promote equity
In a paper titled “Public transit access and the changing spatial distribution of poverty,” Pathak, Wyczalkowski and Huang analyze the link between public bus routes and the geography of poverty in the Atlanta metropolitan area. Using tract-level U.S. census data from 1970 to 2010, the authors found that the presence of a public bus route in Atlanta’s suburban census tracts is associated with a 2.32 percent increase in the poverty rate on average, compared to census tracts without bus routes. Public bus routes attract low-income residents because they offer an affordable means of transportation.
This finding is important because it suggests that public transportation can help to reduce the concentration of poverty by making suburban communities more accessible to low-income populations. It also exposes the shortfalls of a narrow understanding of poverty as an entirely place-based phenomenon that requires place-based solutions. The study shows that actions taken to strengthen public transit access can help impoverished individuals and families not by revitalizing their current communities, but instead by providing the mobility necessary to ensure they are not trapped in those communities.
