Transportation hardships: Investigating the power of owning a reliable vehicle in rural areas
Course Credit?
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Robert NielsenDescription
Access to a reliable vehicle can serve as a lifeline in rural areas of the United States. Without access to a reliable vehicle, residents of rural areas face economic, health, and social hardships. Nearly two decades ago, several colleagues and I completed research in rural Iowa that found that having access to a reliable vehicle improved the probability of employment by more than earning a high school education or being in good health. Other researchers have found that a lack of access to a reliable vehicle is associated with social isolation, greater risk of food insecurity, and poor physical health outcomes. My goal is to develop a new database that will allow us to update what we know about the role access to a reliable vehicle means to residents of rural areas in the U.S. Moreover, recent market trends have made owning a reliable vehicle even more difficult on household budgets, so the new dataset will include indicators of vehicle affordability trends to estimate how difficult it is for low- and middle-income households to afford transportation to work and appointments dentists, doctors, and other professionals who tend to operate outside of rural areas. This research opportunity is ideal for students who are interested in the topics (rural poverty, economic hardship, public policy) or the research methods (compiling public data from state and federal offices, supplementing those data with survey data from rural areas, then using simple statistical techniques to identify the role reliable transportation plays in economic, social, and physical well-being). If course credit is desired, I'm happy to complete this work in a directed-research format for course credit.
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