The Wage Effects of Residential Location and Commuting Constraints on Employed Married Women

Abstract

It has been argued that greater spatial constraints are imposed on the job searches of women workers and that these greater constraints account for some of the gender wage gap. All researchers agree that women commute shorter distances to work than men. In addition, some researchers have argued from indirect evidence that two-earner households give greater weight to husbands' job opportunities when choosing a residential location. In this paper, we use data on two-earner households from the 1980 Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) of the US Census for the Detroit and Philadelphia SMSAs to quantify the effects of residential location and of gender differences in commuting behaviour on the gender gap in wages. First, we find that within white households wives encounter relatively greater spatial variation in wages than their husbands but that there is less of a gender difference among black households. Second, we analyse the simultaneous effects of commuting and residential constraints on wages. We find for both cities, and for both blacks and whites, that the gender wage gap is not changed in any significant way by altering women's intrametropolitan residential and job locations.

Spatial Mismatch and Labor Market Segmentation for African-American and Latina Women

“…In summary, most of the above studies find some support for the spatial mismatch hypothesis for black and Hispanic women. The evidence is tentative, however, and limited either to highly aggregate studies across metropolitan areas or, as in Madden and Chui (1990) and McLafferty and Preston (1991), to narrowly defined categories of workers. Moreover, studies have not adequately investigated whether commuting differences reflect differences in earnings and access to transportation or an explicitly spatial mismatch between jobs and residences.…”

Urban effects on participation and wages: Are there gender differences?

“…For example, Hesley and Strange [13] illustrate how agglomeration itself can be driven by increasing expected urban match quality, while Wheeler [34] shows how decreasing search costs lead to more productive matches, increased sorting and wages in urban labor markets. Evidence suggests that women are less spatially mobile than men, with job search conducted over a smaller area than men (Madden and Chiu [19]). Hence, denser markets and better job matching may counterbalance this reduced mobility.…”

“…There are a number of reasons why such gender differences might exist. First, empirical evidence suggests that women are less spatially mobile than men, with job search conducted over a smaller area than men (Madden and Chiu [19]). In denser urban labor markets, improved urban job matching may counterbalance this reduced mobility and hence, one might expect that any urban wage premium would be larger for women than men.…”

Home, Work, and Locality the Case of Thorold, Ontario'

“…Not only do more women find work from a fixed home address, but a series of studies including Hecht (1974), Madden (1981), Fagnani (1983), Hanson and Johnston (1985), Pratt (1988a, 1988b), and McLafferty (1990, 1991) have found that women travel shorter distances to work, although in the last case, travel time differences in Toronto were insignificant. In a study of office journeys-towork in five U.K. towns (Watford, Reading, Southampton, Swindon, and Liverpool), Daniels (1980) found consistently shorter travel distances for women; time differences showed a similar pattern but were much less marked.…”