How Does Transportation Insecurity Compare and Relate to Other Indicators of Material Hardship in the U.S.?

Details

• Creators:
  Murphy, Alexandra K. ; Pilkauskas, Natasha V. ; Kovski, Nicole ; Gould‑Werth, Alix
• Corporate Creators:
  University of Michigan ; University of Wisconsin. Institute for Research on Poverty
• Subject/TRT Terms:
  Data Collection Economic Indicators Equity Food Food Insecurity Hardship Inequality Low Income Groups Material Poverty Public Utilities Surveys Transportation Insecurity Transportation Safety Transport Disadvantage Urban Areas

  More +
• DOI:
  https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-025-03585-y
• Resource Type:
  Journal Article
• Right Statement:
  Open Access; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Geographical Coverage:
  United States
• Corporate Publisher:
  Springer
• Abstract:
  Increasingly, researchers have used measures of material hardship (food, housing, utility, bills, medical) to better understand economic distress. Missing from this literature are hardships related to transportation. This descriptive paper uses recent nationally representative data and a newly validated measure of transportation insecurity to address gaps in our understanding of how transportation insecurity compares and relates to other indicators of material hardship. We find that transportation insecurity is a very common material hardship experienced by U.S. adults. The demographic groups most likely to experience transportation insecurity are also those disproportionately affected by other hardships, especially food insecurity. Additionally, we find that transportation and food insecurity are the hardships most likely to co-occur with other forms of hardship. Finally, we examine the association between these hardships and self-rated health and depressive symptoms, finding that transportation insecurity is similarly associated with these outcomes as food insecurity and unmet medical needs. Overall, these results suggest that transportation insecurity behaves similarly to other hardships, especially food insecurity, and underscores the importance of addressing transportation insecurity in efforts to reduce material hardship and improve overall wellbeing.
• Content Notes:
  This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
• Format:
  PDF
• Collection(s):
  US Transportation Collection
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:fac29db006748944afe2c2210712626be49408f1f90b74fa99fd4b64df4143f71ce15bc65d1a5f4aaac93fc661103ddabe21c6d21370f1bf3ea860cc098bc520
• Download URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/89178/dot_89178_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 1.44 MB ]