Disentangling the role of cars and transit in employment and labor earnings

Michael J. Smart () and Nicholas J. Klein ()
Additional contact information
Michael J. Smart: Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
Nicholas J. Klein: Cornell University

Transportation, 2020, vol. 47, issue 3, No 11, 1275-1309

Abstract: Abstract We examine the relationship between transportation access on the one hand and individuals’ employment and labor earnings on the other. We improve on existing studies by bringing a large national panel data set to bear on this question, attempting to disentangle the mechanisms by which individuals improve their economic standing and, finally, comparing the economic benefits to the direct costs of car ownership. To do this, we use nine waves from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics from 1999 to 2015. We find that access to a car is a strong predictor of future economic benefit for individuals, and that at very high levels of transit access, carless individuals can also fare equally well. Access to an automobile is strongly associated with employment, job retention, and earning more money over time. Though having a car is associated with economic benefits, owning and operating a car is expensive; yet, our findings suggest that the benefits may outweigh the costs for most people living outside neighborhoods with truly excellent transit service.

Keywords: Economic mobility; Transit; Cars; PSID (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11116-018-9959-3 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:kap:transp:v:47:y:2020:i:3:d:10.1007_s11116-018-9959-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/11116/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11116-018-9959-3

Access Statistics for this article

Transportation is currently edited by Kay W. Axhausen

More articles in Transportation from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().