Abstract

Jobs-Housing Balance: GIS Analysis of an Economic Development Issue
Track: Urban and Regional Planning
Authors: Mike Pogodzinski, Richard Kos

This paper examines the regional jobs-housing balance at the MSA level in California. Jobs-housing balance has been a concern in economic development for many years. An imbalance, defined as a mismatch between jobs within a pay category with housing affordable to people within that pay category, may be an impediment to economic growth.
We construct several indices of jobs-housing imbalance and examine the geographic pattern of imbalance measures in California MSAs. We used data from the American Community Survey about the distribution of rents, housing costs, incomes, and earnings to compute several measures of imbalance (for example, the Gini coefficient). We also examine whether high-end and low-end housing is over- or under-distributed within an MSA.
The paper also examines the dynamics of imbalance in California MSAs.