Transportation as a Barrier to Education Access: Evidence from Chicago Public Schools

Cecilia H. Moreira, Steven Puller and Ini Umosen

No 35915, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: School choice can weaken the link between residential neighborhood and educational opportunity only if students can reach the schools available to them. We study school choice in Chicago, where high schoolers can choose among schools throughout the city but generally rely on public transit, making the structure of the transit network a key determinant of opportunity. Using student-level rankings and public transit travel times, we document two systematic patterns: Black students are less likely to rank top-rated schools first and face longer public transit times to such schools. We estimate a discrete choice model to separate the value placed on schools from the costs of reaching them. We find that high schools vary substantially in how they are valued and that there is a high degree of agreement across racial groups in their relative ranking. However, transit times vary significantly across neighborhoods, generating racial differences in demand for top-rated schools. Counterfactually, giving Black students the travel times of white students increases demand for top-rated schools by 23 percentage points. Finally, we identify underserved neighborhoods where public transit access constrains demand and quantify how targeted bus service would increase demand for high-quality schools. Our counterfactuals quantify how transportation expands school access.

JEL-codes: I21 I24 R4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-mid, nep-tre and nep-uep
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