The impact of public transportation and commuting on urban labour markets: evidence from the new survey of London life and labour, 1929-32

Seltzer, Andrew; Wadsworth, Jonathan

The impact of public transportation and commuting on urban labour markets: evidence from the new survey of London life and labour, 1929-32

Andrew Seltzer and Jonathan Wadsworth

CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

Abstract: This paper examines the consequences of the commuter transport revolution on working-class labour markets in London, circa 1930. Using GIS-based data constructed from the New Survey of London Life and Labour, we examine the extent of commuting and estimate the earnings returns to commuting. We show that commuting was an important feature for most working-class Londoners in the early-twentieth century. Using a variety of identifying procedures to address the endogeneity of distance commuted, we estimate a likely causal return of between 1.5 to 3.5 percent of earnings for each additional kilometre travelled. We also show that commuting was an important contributor to improvements in quality of life in the early-twentieth century.

Keywords: commuting; public transport; earnings; London (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-09-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-lma, nep-tre and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1868.pdf (application/pdf)

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp1868

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().