Is lack of transportation the missing link between access to healthcare, food, and work?

Abstract: This study aims to understand the transportation and socioeconomic factors that affect individuals' access to food, healthcare, and job opportunities. This study analyzes five years of data (2020 to 2024) from the Household Pulse Survey (HPS), a multi-agency data collection effort led by the U.S. Census Bureau. This survey is circulated by email or text invitations and collects personal, household, socioeconomic, health and transportation-related information. This data collection is an ongoing effort and as of today data have been collected in fifteen different phases. Various state and city-level descriptive statistics are generated from the dataset. The preliminary data analysis show that from the first week of January to the first week of February in 2024, 15% of individuals in Mississippi state reported some sort of food scarcity. While food scarcity is highest in Mississippi, it is lowest in South Dakota.  Individuals from West Virginia were reported to have the highest long-term symptoms of COVID-19. Also, the descriptive analysis shows that a significant number of individuals are unemployed in this region. Without a statistical model, it is difficult to assess the factors behind these societal issues. Therefore, using these rich datasets this study estimated a series of advanced econometric models to understand the factors affecting food scarcity, lack of healthcare access, and work. The model results reveal lack of transport access and low income are the prime factors for food scarcity, unemployment, and lack of healthcare access. Various evidence-based policies could be adopted from these models, reducing these societal issues and challenges.