Commuting time changes following residential relocations and job relocations

This paper focuses on empirical analysis of commuting time changes for workers who relocate residence, relocate job, or combine both residence and job relocation. A large register data set of individuals on the Swedish labor market, including travel times, is studied. Workers are not necessarily seeking to decrease their commuting time when they relocate job and/or residence. In fact, the average commuting time is longer after a relocation than before, thus suggesting that workers trade between a better job, a better residence and commuting time. The paper also presents results from a set of econometric models suggesting that commuting time changes differ substantially with respect to socio-economic characteristics as well as with respect to the part of the distribution of commuting time change that is analyzed.