Youth Mobility and Access to Economic Opportunities

The association between transport access and employment outcomes has received considerable attention in US metropolitan areas and, more recently, in some EU cities. However, evidence for this association shows mixed empirical results. The objectives of this thesis were to enhance the understanding of the relationship between transport job accessibility and employment outcomes in the relatively unexplored contexts of Great Britain and the Netherlands, with specific attention for young people, and to provide a methodological contribution to the current assessment of this relationship. To realise these objectives, the existing empirical evidence on the linkage between transport access and employment outcomes has been reviewed and enhanced with national and regional case studies in Great Britain and the Netherlands, consisting of a quantitative phase based on the computation of transport job accessibility measures combined with national individual-level employment probability models, followed by a qualitative phase of in-depth interviews with young job seekers.

The thesis established a positive association between transport access and employment outcomes, with varying effects for four identified categories of transport measures: car ownership, public transport access, commute times, and job accessibility levels. It further established that similar patterns do hold in the UK and the Netherlands, but only in certain contexts. In particular, job seekers without access to private vehicles, such as young people, low income and lower educated groups and those residing in urban areas under-served by public transport, such as peripheral and deprived neighbourhoods could benefit from higher levels of job accessibility. This goes beyond improving door-to-door journey times and includes reliability of services, especially in off-peak hours, affordability, comfort and (perceived) safety. The findings in this thesis are important for policymakers in that they imply that job seekers may benefit from more targeted public policies to improve their transport access and thereby their social mobility.