Is it expensive to be poor? Public transport in Sweden
Anders Bondemark,
Henrik Andersson,
Anders Wretstrand and
Karin Brundell-Freij
Additional contact information
Anders Bondemark: Skane University Hospital [Lund]
Anders Wretstrand: Skane University Hospital [Lund]
Karin Brundell-Freij: Skane University Hospital [Lund]
Post-Print from HAL
Abstract:
One of the reasons to subsidise public transport is to improve the mobility of low-income groups by providing affordable public transport; however, the literature describes a situation whereby those with a low income are unable to afford the cheapest tickets per trip, i.e. travelcards, as they usually require a considerable up-front cost. In this study, we use a large dataset from the Swedish National Travel Survey to investigate whether, and if so how, income explains monthly travelcard possession among individuals for whom this would have been the least expensive option. We find a robust positive relationship between income and travelcard possession among low-income earners, indicating that those with a low income pay more to use public transport than more affluent individuals. As the accessibility of low-income groups is an important motivation for public transport subsidies, the findings from this study have important policy implications.
Keywords: Fares; Public transport; Income; Liquidity constraints (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-tre and nep-ure
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-03044001v1
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)
Published in Transportation, 2020, 70, ⟨10.1007/s11116-020-10145-5⟩
Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-03044001v1/document (application/pdf)
Related works:
Journal Article: Is it expensive to be poor? Public transport in Sweden (2021) 
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03044001
DOI: 10.1007/s11116-020-10145-5
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD (hal@ccsd.cnrs.fr).