Beyond Transport: The Role of Individual Education in Job Accessibility Inequality

Abstract

This study investigates the direct impact of individual education on formal job accessibility inequality, using Fortaleza, Brazil, as a case study. Although transport studies often overlook educational constraints, we demonstrate that disregarding education significantly underestimates job accessibility inequality, especially because of the overestimation of accessibility of the most disadvantaged populations. Employing a spatial microsimulation technique to obtain individual data and an adapted cumulative opportunity measure to account for individual information, our proposed method uncovers hidden and substantial inequalities. The disparities between our adapted measure and the widely used cumulative opportunity measure highlight the crucial role of education in job accessibility estimations, especially in the context of transport justice. The proposed method shows an inequality, measured by the Palma ratio, of almost twice the value shown by the cumulative opportunity measure. The findings emphasize the multifactorial nature of accessibility and advocate for a nuanced understanding that considers individual characteristics and constraints on accessibility estimations. Future research directions include exploring the method from a sufficientarian perspective and assessing the impact of different individual characteristics on accessibility.