A spatio-temporal analysis of population and employment growth for Southern California

The population-employment (P-E) relationship in the multicounty region has not been considered enough to document, although numerous future regional policy issues affecting local areas have required producing a technically sound and politically acceptable projection of population or employment with the US metropolitan planning organizations. This study intended to answer two key questions based on the county-level data sets of P-E ratio for Southern California. First, we investigated whether the Southern California region has been or will be experiencing any convergence in the P-E ratio gap among counties in the long-term perspective. Second, we tested to understand whether a vector autoregression (VAR) approach contributes to developing the county-level P-E ratio projection model for the region. Finally, we validated the VAR projections using independent data sets. The quantified information in the present study can help regional and subregional stakeholders encourage and initiate an effective discussion about the future of the region.