Spatial Mismatch

Spatial mismatch is the sociological, economic and political phenomenon associated with economic restructuring in which employment opportunities for low-income people are located far away from the areas where they live. In the United States, this takes the form of high concentrations of poverty in central cities, with low-wage, low-skill employment opportunities concentrated in the suburbs.

The term was first used by John F. Kain in 1968. In The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy (1987), William Julius Wilson was an early exponent, one of the first to enunciate at length the spatial mismatch theory for the development of a ghetto underclass in the United States.