Income, Labor Supply, and Urban Residence

The framework for urban spatial models as developed in the past 20 years contains 2 primary features-access and bid rent. In a recent article, William Wheaton has seriously damaged this framework by concluding that the long-run spatial equilibrium theory derived from bid rent ''contributes little to the explanation of US location-income patterns''. He finds that the theory developed by William Alonso, Richard Muth, and others produces a very weak tendency for middle- and upper-class income families to live at a greater distance than poor families from the central business area. It is argued that the Alonso-Muth theory is an important tool in understanding urban structure if one previously ignored factor is recognized-that the labor force participation of married women varies dramatically and inversely with the income of their husbands. Because middle- and lower-income households have more of their members in the labor force, these groups are brought closer to the central business district.