Do rural older adults take fewer trips than their urban counterparts for lack of a ride?

Manish Shirgaokar, Bonnie Dobbs, Leah Anderson and Emily Hussey

Journal of Transport Geography, 2020, vol. 87, issue C

Abstract: Aging and the presence of one or more illnesses result in limited travel for many adults age 65 and over. Yet, the need to get to essential, social, and non-emergency medical destinations endures. At some point in their life, older adults become dependent on family/friends, or rely on for-profit/not-for-profit transportation services for their mobility needs, while some do not go on certain trips. Researchers have studied out-of-home activity and mobility of older adults using data on trips taken. There is a gap, however, in understanding trips not taken in the older adult population in rural versus urban locations. Our objectives in this paper are: (i) to investigate unmet travel needs of older adults by relying on responses for trips not taken; (ii) to examine how personal abilities, living situation, and socio-demographic factors are associated with trips not taken to various destinations; and (iii) to compare the likelihood of trips not taken due to lack of a ride in urban versus rural locations across the age and income spectrum. Our data come from a phone survey conducted across the province of Alberta, Canada, in 2017–18 (n = 1390). We specify ordinal logistic models where the dependent variable is how often a respondent did not undertake a trip due to not having a ride to various trip destinations. We find that rural seniors are more likely to not take trips compared to older adults in cities, holding all else equal including driving cessation, worsening health, and disability. Rural seniors who live alone or in low-density housing are also more likely to not take trips compared to urban older adults. Household income, however, tempers these location preferences. Our findings suggest that rural older adults can be supported through income transfers, community-based low-cost travel, and moving to higher-density residential locations.

Keywords: Disability; Driver; Older adults; Rural; Unmet travel needs; Urban (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0966692318305532

Related works:
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:eee:jotrge:v:87:y:2020:i:c:s0966692318305532

DOI: 10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2020.102819

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Transport Geography is currently edited by Frank Witlox

More articles in Journal of Transport Geography from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().