Benito, Andrew and Oswald, Andrew J. (2000) Commuting in Great Britain in the 1990s. Working Paper. Coventry: University of Warwick, Department of Economics. (Warwick economic research papers.

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Abstract

The paper studies commuting in Great Britain in the 1990s. The average one-way commute to work is now 38 minutes in London, 33 minutes in the south-east, and 21 minutes in the rest of the country. There are three other findings. First, commuting times are especially long among the highly educated, among home-owners, and among those who work in large plants and offices. In Britain, people with university degrees spend 50% more time travelling to work than those with low qualifications. Private renters do much less commuting than owner-occupiers. Second, there has recently been a rise in commuting times in the south-east and the capital. In our sample, full-time workers in London have lost 70 minutes per week of leisure time to commuting during the course of the 1990s. By contrast, outside the south-east of Britain, there has been no increase in commuting over this decade. In the south-east, 30% of workers now take at least 45 minutes to get to work. In the rest of the country, only 10% do. Third, after controlling for other factors and allowing for the endogeneity of the wage rate, there is a ceteris paribus inverse relationship between commuting hours and hourly pay.

Item Type:	Working or Discussion Paper (Working Paper)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor
Divisions:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Economics
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Commuting -- Great Britain, Transportation -- Great Britain, Employer-sponsored transportation, Great Britain -- Economic conditions
Series Name:	Warwick economic research papers
Publisher:	University of Warwick, Department of Economics
Place of Publication:	Coventry
Date:	April 2000
Number:	No.560
Number of Pages:	33
Status:	Not Peer Reviewed
Access rights to Published version:	Open Access
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URI:	http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/1617

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