اثرات دسترسی به اتومبیل بر نتایج اشتغال برای رفاه گیرندگان

We use four waves of a longitudinal survey of current and former welfare recipients in Tennessee to examine the effects of car access on employment, weekly hours of work, and hourly wages. Contributions include a focus on car access instead of ownership, treatment of urban and rural differences, and controls for the simultaneity of car access and employment outcomes. Results indicate that car access generally increases the probability of being employed and leaving welfare. Car access also leads to more hours of work for welfare recipients with a work requirement and enables participants to find better-paying jobs.

The imposition of work requirements in 1996 as part of the shift from Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) marked a major change in US welfare policy and prompted states to take a broader approach to welfare assistance. Requiring participants to work meant not only providingapproach was evidenced by both a change in policy and a shift toward more spending on support services and less emphasis on cash benefits. The primary goal of support services is to remove barriers to work by providing such things as transportation, childcare, dental, and optical assistance. Among barriers to work, participants consistently identify transportation as a significant problem. Consequently, many states provide some form of reimbursement, shuttle, or public transportation to work-related activities. States also permit asset exemptions (for the purposes of calculating eligibility and benefit level) either for one entire vehicle or for a set value amount. Researchers have argued that car ownership allows for job search in a broader area, increased reliability on the job, and shorter commute times that translate into higher employment rates. The recent literature has provided evidence that car ownership does indeed increase the probability of being employed. However, previous studies suffer from a few key limitations that are potentially important to policy makers. First, they do not always adequately account for the simultaneity of car ownership and employment (i.e., the idea that correlation between car ownership and employment might not indicate causation) or selection bias in the estimation of hours and wages. They also have not fully considered the important differences across urban and rural populations. Finally, they have focused almost exclusively on car ownership rather than access. We address each of these, while also improving upon estimation methods and making use of more diverse panel data, in order to provide a more accurate account of the effects of car access on employment outcomes and welfare participation. We have a rich set of policy related control variables including participation in education and training programs. Our intent is to inform the policy debate over the relative merits of personal vehicle support programs as components of a broad welfare program. cash assistance but also identifying and removing barriers to employment. This broader

Early research into the effects of car ownership on employment has established a positive correlation between the two. Subsequent literature has moved toward causality by accounting for the simultaneity of employment and car ownership decisions using both instrumental variable and panel data approaches. We improve on the previous literature in several ways. First, we broaden the perspective to account for car access and not just car ownership. Second, we consider urban and rural differences rather than focusing only on urban welfare recipients. Finally, the rich survey data in the FALS allow for a more detailed analysis. Weekly hours worked and hourly wages are considered as outcomes in addition to employment levels.Our results are broadly consistent with those of earlier work. Our analysis of unemployed Wave 1 program participants reveals that those who had car access in the first wave of the survey are much more likely to become employed and leave the program as of Wave 4 (18–24 months later). Among the subset of unemployed Wave 1 program participants who had work requirements, those who had access to a car in Wave 1 are dramatically less likely to remain unemployed and leave the program as of Wave 4. Results are similar in spirit for employed Wave 1 program participants, regardless of work requirement status. For this group, having access to a car inWave 1 reduces the probability of becoming unemployed while remaining on the program and increases the likelihood of remaining employed but leaving the program. Magnitudes were generally larger for employed Wave 1 participants, suggesting that car access helps workers keep jobs as well as find better (higher paying) jobs as discussed below. While car access does not seem to be an important determinant of weekly work hours for broader samples, we do find that gaining access to a car between Waves 1 and 3 increases Wave 4 work hours by nearly nine hours per week among Wave 1 program participants with work requirements. Car access also seems to enable respondents to find better-paying jobs. Wave 4 wages were $0.72 to $2.12 higher for those who had car access in Wave 1. Results for hourly wages were sensitive to the inclusion of urban controls providing a possible explanation for the negative effects of car ownership on wages found in the earlier literature. Overall, these results suggest that car access is important to the labor market success of low-income households generally and welfare recipients more specifically. Our results suggest that promoting car access is a viable policy option for improving employment and hourly wage outcomes for welfare recipients and recent leavers. Car access improves the likelihood that participants transition into employment and off public assistance and allows welfare recipients and recent leavers to find jobs with higher wages. The results for hours worked are not as straightforward. Car access leads to more weekly hours of work among program participants with a work requirement but does not have a significant effect in more general samples. The ability to find jobs with higher wages might be contributing to this result as respondents can maintain a given level of income with fewer work hours. In order to further guide policy decisions, important areas of future work include analyzing the effectiveness of current car promotion programs. Topics might include the determinants of participation in such programs, insurance and maintenance costs, the effects on vehicle fleet age, and the subsequent environmental effects. Further analysis of longer panels of data is needed to assess the long-term effects of car access on employment outcomes.