Title

Hidden Costs of Carpooling in Family Life: Travel Behavior of Hispanic Families with Children in the US

Abstract

In the U.S., Hispanic immigrant households who have low access to private vehicles typically depend on carpooling rather than taking transit, the tendency that is not observed for immigrants of other race/ethnicity groups. Moreover, my previous paper reveals that females of Hispanic immigrants are heavily dependent on others' mobility and delay becoming drivers, even though they seem to choose auto-dependent lifestyle at household level. These findings leave a question how much time is wasted by dependence on carpooling when many household members are transportation disadvantaged, such as children under driving age. This paper explores travel characteristics of Hispanic immigrant households with children in the following points; (1) whether they are lower mobility at household level, (2) whether adult members' time is wasted for transporting children, and (3) whether children's total travel time and active non-commuting trip frequency are different by the number of drivers and/or vehicles in the household, using the National Household Travel Survey data of 2009.

Keywords

Mobility, Immigrants, Hispanics, Children, National Household Travel Survey


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Miwa MATSUO
Research Institute for Economics and Business Administration
Kobe University
Rokkodai-cho, Nada-ku, Kobe
657-8501 Japan
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