Employment proximity and outcomes for Moving to Opportunity families

The Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing Demonstration (MTO) randomly assigned housing vouchers to public housing residents in an experimental test of the effect of neighborhood and location on household outcomes. In terms of adult employment outcomes, the 2 treatment groups did not significantly differ from the control group. We use MTO data to examine whether spatial proximity to jobs and job growth explains this lack of treatment effect. We first estimate differences in access to jobs and job growth for the 3 MTO groups. We then use 2-stage least squares models to test relationships between employment accessibility and 2 key outcomes: employment status and earned income. We find that employment accessibility declined for all groups, and these declines were strongest for the 2 treatment groups. However, our results show essentially no effect of employment proximity on earnings or employment status for MTO participants.