Gender Differences in Value of Commuting Time- Evidence from a Household Model of Subjective Life Satisfaction in Sweden

This paper presents estimates of the value of commuting time obtained from
a model of subjective life satisfaction in the context of a household. The
model is estimated on Swedish data that contains information on subjective
life satisfaction for cohabitating persons. The data set also contains information on individuals’ and partners’ commuting time and socio-economic characteristics. The model uses a correlated error structure for the household dimension in the data and it is estimated as an ordered probit model. Separate models are, furthermore, estimated for households with and without young children, to capture potential differences for females and males from having young children. The main results suggest that males’ subjective life satisfaction is strongly influenced by both their and their partner’s income, while females’ subjective life satisfaction is less influenced by their own income and strongly influenced by the their partner’s income. In addition,
the results indicate that the presence of young children in a household has
a significant effect on the influences of commuting time for partnered males
and females. In general when considering the influence of commuting time
by gender, it is shown that there is little difference in disutility for females
and males without young children but a higher disutility for commuting time
for females than her male counterparts when there are young children in the
household. From these findings, it is concluded that the value of commuting
time based on subjective life satisfaction is higher for females, particularly
in households with young children.