Publication type
Journal Article
Authors
Publication date
November 3, 2020
Summary:
Governments around the world are encouraging people to switch away from sedentary modes of travel towards more active modes, including walking and cycling. The aim of these schemes is to improve population health and to reduce emissions. There is considerable evidence on the latter, but relatively little on the former. This paper investigates the impact of mode choice on physical and mental health. Using data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study, we exploit changes in mode of commute to identify health outcome responses. Individuals who change modes are matched with those whose mode remains constant. Overall we find that mode switches affect both physical and mental health. When switching from car to active travel we see an increase in physical health for women and in mental health for both genders. In contrast, both men and women who switch from active travel to car are shown to experience a significant reduction in their physical health and health satisfaction, and a decline in their mental health when they change from active to public transport.
Published in
Health Economics
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1002/hec.4184
ISSN
10579230
Subjects
Notes
Open Access
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
© 2020 The Authors. Health Economics published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Online Early
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