As commute times increase, married women work fewer hours or even drop out of the workforce according to a forthcoming article in the Journal of Urban Economics. The finding, summarized for a general audience recently in Atlantic Cities, helps explain differences in women’s workforce participation across various metro areas.
This insight may seem less important to transportation practice than to labor-market studies. But in its focus on travel time as a driver of economic outcomes, the article has clear relevance to transportation agencies that are wrestling with setting meaningful, outcome-based performance measures.
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