Co-author(s):
Presented in: 2024 AREUEA-ASSA Winter Meeting, 2024 Seminario de Microeconomia Aplicada (MAP), 17th North American Meeting of the Urban Economics Association, 12th European Meeting of the Urban Economics Association, 98th Conference of the Western Economic Association International, 2022 LACEA’s Urban Economics Network Meetings
Abstract: I study the impact of transit on commuting and gender inequality in single and married households. I propose a new channel through which transit infrastructure can affect married households: labor and commuting decisions are made jointly. When the husband increases his earnings, the household is more willing to sacrifice the wife’s earnings to reduce the household’s commuting costs. Therefore, improving the husband’s prospects through reduced commute times (direct channel) can affect his wife’s prospects (indirect channel) and vice-versa. I set up a general equilibrium model featuring single and married households and use it to study new transit infrastructure in Lima, Peru. In the counterfactual analysis, in areas that experienced the largest reductions in commuting times, the gender gap in real earnings among married households decreased by 12 percent. However, the gap remained unchanged among singles. To a first order, absent the indirect use channel and considering all locations in the city, the gender gap in dual-earner households would have decreased by about 23 percent more.