Factors Related to the Commute Time of Dual-earner Couples: From a Family Developmental Perspective

Abstract

This study observed and investigated the commute time of dual-earner couples from a family developmental perspective. It tested whether the household responsibility hypothesis was effective in explaining the gender gap in the commute time for these couples. I extracted 2,103 time diaries written by 1,266 matched couples from the 2014 Korean Time Use Survey data for this study. The sample was categorized by the age of the eldest child into four age groups of 0-6, 7-12, 13-18, and 19-29. Analytic results from ANOVA, Scheffé test, and OLS regression are as follows. First, husbands traveled longer hours to work than wives in all age groups, while the commute time of couples tended to increase along with the child’ age. However, couples in the child group aged 7 to 12 had the shortest commute time. Second, domestic labor time of wives were negatively associated with the commute time, which appeared to support the household responsibility hypothesis. Third, in the child group aged 7 to 12, wives spent more time for work commute as their income increased; however, wives with traditional gender role attitudes had a shorter commute time in the child group aged 0 to 6. Forth, neither the wives’ nor husbands’ work characteristics were related to the wives’ commute time; however, both wives’ and husbands’ work characteristics were related to the husbands’ commute time. The findings suggest the possibility of spatial entrapment by working wives throughout the family life cycle due to household responsibilities, which provides implications for policy intervention in consideration of the gender gap in commute time for dual-earner couples.