Household interactions and children's school travel: the effect of parental work patterns on walking and biking to school

Abstract

This study evaluates how household interactions affect walking and biking to school. The cross-sectional research design uses a representative sample of trips to school by US youth (n = 8231) to test how parental employment status and commute patterns affect non-motorized travel. Results from a binary logit model show that young children (5-14) with mothers who commute to work in the morning are less likely to walk or bike to school after controlling for individual, household, and neighborhood factors. Policymakers may therefore want to create programs that allow parents to share chaperoning responsibilities for the school trip to address parental time constraints. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.