TY  - JOUR
AU  - Boustan,Leah Platt
AU  - Margo,Robert A.
TI  - Race, Segregation, and Postal Employment: New Evidence on Spatial Mismatch
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 13462
PY  - 2007
Y2  - October 2007
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13462
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13462.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Leah Platt Boustan
Department of Economics
8283 Bunche Hall
UCLA
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1477
Tel: 310/794-4263
Fax: 310/825-9528
E-Mail: lboustan@econ.ucla.edu

Robert A. Margo
Department of Economics
Boston University
270 Bay State Road
Boston, MA 02215
Tel: 617/353-6819
Fax: 617/343-8495
E-Mail: margora@bu.edu
AB  - The spatial mismatch hypothesis posits that employment decentralization isolated urban blacks from work opportunities. This paper focuses on one large employer that has remained in the central city over the twentieth century – the U.S. Postal Service. We find that blacks substitute towards postal work as other employment opportunities leave the city circa 1960. The response is particularly strong in segregated areas, where black neighborhoods are clustered near the central business district. Furthermore, this pattern only holds for non-mail carriers, many of whom work in central processing facilities. More recently, the relationship between black postal employment and segregation has declined, suggesting that spatial mismatch has become less important over time.
ER  -