Geographic inequalities in accessibility of essential services
People’s ability to access essential services is key to their labour market and social
inclusion. An important dimension of accessibility is physical accessibility, but
little cross-country evidence exists on how close people live to the services facilities
they need. This paper helps to address this gap, focusing on three types of essential
services: Public Employment Services, primary schools and Early Childhood Education
and Care. It collects and maps data on the location of these services for a selection
of OECD countries and links them with data on population and transport infrastructure.
This allows to compute travel times to the nearest service facility and to quantify
disparities in accessibility at the regional level. The results highlight substantial
inequalities in accessibility of essential services across and within countries. Although
large parts of the population can easily reach these services in most countries, some
people are relatively underserved. This is particularly the case in non-metropolitan
and low-income regions. At the same time, accessibility seems to be associated with
the potential demand for these services once accounting for other regional economic
and demographic characteristics.
Available from April 18, 2024
In series:OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papersview more titles