| This dissertation investigates the role of transportation in providing access to education and employment opportunities. The first two chapters use data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation to measure the effect of automobile ownership and transit service on employment outcomes. The third chapter uses data from the San Diego public school district to look at how distance, busing, and other factors affect the probability of applying to public school choice programs.; The first chapter combines micro-data with state-level data on insurance premiums and gas taxes to estimate the effects of automobile ownership on the probability of employment, hours worked and wages. Instrumenting car ownership on insurance and gas tax costs yields large estimates of employment and hours effects of car ownership that are close in magnitude to Ordinary Least Squares estimates. We find larger employment effects for low-skilled workers, comparable hours effects across skill categories, and wage effects that are insignificant for low- and medium-skilled workers and negative for high-skilled workers.; The second chapter looks at the effect of public transit service on labor market outcomes. For those without any college education, a 10% increase in the transit service measure leads to point estimates of increased probability of employment that range between 0.15 and 0.63 percentage points, depending on the sample and the measure of transit density used. For the higher education group, a significant employment effect appears only when the sample which includes very large cities is used. A modest, positive effect on hours occurs for both education groups, but only in the sample which includes the larger cities.; In the third chapter, data on high school students is used to estimate multivariate probit models of applications to three school choice programs offered through the public school system. Distance to the option schools is found to matter most for the program that does not provide busing. There is limited evidence that the decision to apply to a program depends on average test scores at the available options. African-American students, female students, and students with high grade point averages are more likely to apply to all three programs. |
