Non-cognitive Traits, Social Capital and Transport Poverty

Abstract

Transport poverty is a major public policy issue in many countries. However, evidence on the factors that influence transport poverty is relatively scant. We contribute to the debate on the factors that influence transport poverty by being the first to examine how non-cognitive traits influence transport poverty. Using 15 waves of panel data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, we find evidence to suggest that locus of control (LoC), an important non-cognitive trait, influences transport poverty. Specifically, we find that being more internal on LoC is associated with a lower probability of being transport poor. This finding is robust to a suite of sensitivity and robustness checks including different constructs of transport poverty, alternative measures of LoC, the use of an out-of-sample supplementary dataset, and different estimation approaches. We find that social capital is an important factor that mediates the relationship between LoC and transport poverty.