An Empirical Analysis of the Commute to Work Patterns of Males and Females in Two-Earner Households

The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the proposition that residential decisions are made with reference to the male head of household's job location, disadvantaging females in the labor market. A sample of approximately 50,000 adults in two-earner households in urban areas distributed across the United States is selected from public use microdata from the 1980 census and used to estimate a simultaneous model to explain commute to work behavior of men and women. The model is estimated separately for households that did and did not change residences in the past year. The impacts of the new residences on the commute times of both male and female workers, holding other variables constant, are compared. We conclude that residential selection does favor males relative to females, although there is evidence that this advantage is eliminated as the ratio of female to male earnings in the same household narrows.