The Effects of Segregation and Spatial Mismatch on Unemployment : Evidence from France

In this paper, we investigate how residential segregation and bad physical access to jobs contribute to urbanunemployment in the Paris region. We first survey the general mechanisms according to which residential segregationand spatial mismatch can have adverse labor-market outcomes. We then discuss the extent of the problem with the helpof relevant descriptive statistics computed from the 1999 Census of the Population and from the 2000 GeneralTransport Survey. Finally, we estimate the effect of indices of segregation computed at the neighborhood andmunicipality levels, as well as job accessibility indices on the labor-market transitions out of unemployment using the1990-2002 Labor Force Survey. Our results show that neighborhood segregation is a key factor that preventsunemployed workers from finding a job. These results are robust to potential location endogeneity biases.