NON-COMMUTERS: THE PEOPLE WHO WALK TO WORK OR WORK AT HOME

P O. Plaut

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

2004

Subject Area

planning - education, ridership - commuting, ridership - commuting, mode - pedestrian, mode - pedestrian

Keywords

Walking distance, Walking, Transportation policy, Telecommuting, Socioeconomic factors, Socioeconomic aspects, Pedestrians, Logits, Logit models, Israel, Income, Households, Gender, Education, Commuters, Census

Abstract

Understanding the socioeconomic characteristics of workers at home and those who walk to work is useful in designing policies that encourage these forms of "travel." This paper identifies some of these socioeconomic characteristics and compares them to those of commuters who travel to work by motorized transportation. Using a large census data set for Israel, separate subsamples are analyzed for heads of household and for their spouses. Metropolitan areas as well as peripheral urbanized areas are analyzed separately. Logit analysis is used to identify those variables that affect the likelihood of different groups of people to walk to work or to work at home. Findings show that walkers to work tend to be lower-income, less-educated people with lower asset ownership rates. Females are overrepresented among them, while high status professionals are underrepresented. Workers at home appear to be a more complex group. They tend to have higher levels of education and wealth than commuters, but earn less on average. They include proportionately more females. The likelihood of working at home increases with home size and with ownership of some durable goods. The workers at home may in fact be comprised of two or more differing groups with contracting characteristics: one higher income and higher educated, and the other with lower socioeconomic indicators. The heterogeneity of this group suggests that the different subgroups each may require different policy tools to encourage nonvehicle commuting.

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