Tracking job and housing dynamics with smartcard data

Jie Huang, David Levinson, Jiaoe Wang and Zi-jia Wang
Additional contact information
Zi-jia Wang: TransportLab, School of Civil Engineering, University of Sydney

No 2018-01, Working Papers from University of Minnesota: Nexus Research Group

Abstract: Residential locations, the jobs–housing relationship, and commuting patterns are key elements to understand urban spatial structure and how city dwellers live. Their successive interaction is important for various fields including urban planning, transport, intraurban migration studies, and social science. However, understanding of the long-term trajectories of workplace and home location, and the resulting commuting patterns, is still limited due to lack of year-to-year data tracking individual behavior. With a 7-y transit smartcard dataset, this paper traces individual trajectories of residences and workplaces. Based on in-metro travel times before and after job and/or home moves, we find that 45 min is an inflection point where the behavioral preference changes. Commuters whose travel time exceeds the point prefer to shorten commutes via moves, while others with shorter commutes tend to increase travel time for better jobs and/or residences. Moreover, we capture four mobility groups: home mover, job hopper, job-and-residence switcher, and stayer. This paper studies how these groups trade off travel time and housing expenditure with their job and housing patterns. Stayers with high job and housing stability tend to be home (apartment unit) owners subject to middle- to high-income groups. Home movers work at places similar to stayers, while they may upgrade from tenancy to ownership. Switchers increase commute time as well as housing expenditure via job and home moves, as they pay for better residences and work farther from home. Job hoppers mainly reside in the suburbs, suffer from long commutes, change jobs frequently, and are likely to be low-income migrants.

JEL-codes: R14 R41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (37)

Published in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) 115(50), 12710-12715

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1815928115 First version, 2018 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden (https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1815928115 [302 Found]--> https://pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1815928115)

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:nex:wpaper:trackingjobhousingdynamics

DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1815928115

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from University of Minnesota: Nexus Research Group Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by David Levinson ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).