Does better job accessibility help people gain employment?

We are pleased to welcome Jeroen Bastiaanssen to host a Research Excellence Series Talk on how job accessibility helps people gain employment.

Jeroen is a PhD-Student at the Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds, where he examines the relationship between transport and employment outcomes in a comparative study of Great Britain and the Netherlands. The research is publicly funded by two regional authorities – the West Yorkshire Combined Authority in the UK and the City of Rotterdam in the Netherlands – and the findings are used to inform their public transport policies.

The Talk

This is the first national study within the context of Great Britain to examine whether better public transport job accessibility, modelled at the micro level of individuals, improves people’s employment probabilities.

Previous studies have typically concentrated on US metropolitan areas, their study uses British national employment micro datasets to assess which areas and population groups would benefit from better public transport services. In an important departure from most standard accessibility methodologies, we computed a public transport job accessibility measure applied nation-wide and combined this with individual-level employment probability models for Great Britain. The models were corrected for endogeneity by applying an instrumental variable approach.

The findings in this study are important for policymakers in that they imply that, in particular, job seekers who rely on public transport services may benefit from more targeted public policies to improve their accessibility to employment and thereby their social mobility.

There will also be time for you to present your questions to Jeroen in the last 15 minutes of the talk.

Book your place now!

Register to join us on Tuesday 22nd February 2022.

Your confirmation email will contain your a Microsoft Teams invite to join us on the day.

If you have any questions, please contact: srs.engagement.team@ons.gov.uk

ONS Research Excellence Series 2022

The SRS Engagement Team like to provide ONS colleagues and members of our research community with a greater understanding of how ONS data is being used to make a real difference.

We are currently building our ONS Research Excellence Series 2022 programme so please keep an eye open for updates.