Effects of Married-Couple Dual-Earner Households on Metropolitan Commuting: Evidence from the Atlanta Metropolitan Area

Abstract

The idea of creating a balance between jobs and housing within different commuter catchment areas of a metropolis has been a prominent approach for reducing traffic congestion, air pollution, and journey-to-work times. Married-couple, dual-earner households, in which both spouses are employed, have been identified as an obstacle to the job-housing balance concept because of their constrained ability to choose a residential location near both workplaces. However, this has not yet been conclusively tested. Drawing on the 2000 5% PUMS dataset for metropolitan Atlanta, this article examines the commuting behavior of such households relative to single-earner households. The results challenge the dominant assumption that the average commutes of married-couple, dual-earner households are necessarily longer than those of single-earner households. In fact, after controlling for all forms of socioeconomic factors in the analysis, this study shows there are either no significant differences, or if there are, the average commutes of single-earner households are longer. It is a lack of affordable housing near job locations, or vice versa, and not the presence of dual-earner households, that should be blamed for lengthening commuting time and difficulties in implementing job-housing balances.

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