Over the past 30 years, economic distress in suburban neighborhoods has become more pronounced. This dissertation, which consists of three self-contained essays, examines how three types of mobility—residential, economic, and transportation—have contributed to the growing number of low-income households living in suburban communities.

In the first essay, I assess the degree to which residential mobility has affected the income dynamics of metropolitan areas in the U.S. I find that poorer residents suburbanized rapidly between 1999 and 2015, leaving central-city neighborhoods for outlying areas at high rates. However, during the same time period, higher-income households also made urban-to-suburban moves in large numbers, meaning that the overall effect of population flows on suburban low-income rates was relatively modest. Results also show that low-income households that relocated from central-city neighborhoods to suburban communities were different from those that remained in urban neighborhoods. Specifically, urban-to-suburban movers were more likely to be white, had more household resources, and lived in origin neighborhoods with lower population densities and less transit supply than those that made intra-urban relocations.

The second essay addresses the influence of economic mobility on the low-income rates of both urban and suburban geographies. The results indicate that in most suburban and urban neighborhood types, more residents transitioned out of low-income status than fell below the low-income threshold. Consequently, economic mobility generally led to aggregate decreases in the percentage of low-income individuals in a given type of neighborhood. At the household level, however, income volatility was more pronounced, and families living in older, moderately dense residential neighborhoods had a relatively high likelihood of experiencing downward economic mobility.

Finally, the third essay investigates how low-income households adapt their transportation mobility to fit new residential contexts. In particular, I examine the relationship between inter-geography relocations and changes in automobile ownership. Findings demonstrate that poorer families adjusted their vehicle ownership to suit the built-environment characteristics of their destination neighborhoods. For example, carless households that made urban-to-suburban moves had a higher likelihood of acquiring a vehicle, ceteris paribus; by contrast, car-owning families that made suburban-to-urban moves had a relatively high probability of reducing their automobile ownership, and were more likely to become carless than households that moved within the suburbs.

Transit patronage plunged staggeringly, from 50 to as much as 94 percent, during the first half of 2020 amidst the worst global pandemic in a century. But transit’s troubles in California date much earlier. From 2014 to 2018, California lost over 165 million annual boardings, a drop of over 11 percent. This report examines public transit in California in the 2010s and the factors behind its falling ridership.

We find that ridership gains and losses have been asymmetric with respect to location, operators, modes, and transit users. Transit ridership has been on a longer-term decline in regions like Greater Los Angeles and on buses, while ridership losses in the Bay Area are more recent. While overall transit boardings across the state are down since 2014, worrisome underlying trends date back earlier as patronage failed to keep up with population growth. But reduced transit service is not responsible for ridership losses, as falling transit ridership occurred at the same time as operators instead increased their levels of transit service.

What factors help to explain losses in transit ridership? Increased access to automobiles explains much, if not most, of declining transit use. Private vehicle access has increased significantly in California and, outside of the Bay Area, is likely the biggest single cause of falling transit ridership. Additionally, new ridehail services such as Lyft and Uber allow travelers to purchase automobility one trip at a time and likely serve as a substitute for at least some transit trips. Finally, neighborhoods are changing in ways that do not bode well for public transit. Households are increasingly locating in outlying areas where they experience longer commutes and less transit access to employment. At the same time, a smaller share of high-propensity transit users now live in the state’s most transit-friendly neighborhoods.

While the 2010s proved a difficult decade for public transit in California, and the opening of the current decade has been an even bigger challenge, transit remains an essential public service. Effectively managing transit recovery in California will require a clear-eyed understanding of the substantially altered environment within which these systems large and small must now operate.