Transport poverty and subjective wellbeing

Using 12 waves of longitudinal data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, we examine the relationship between transport poverty and subjective wellbeing. To measure transport poverty, we use indicators that reflect transport affordability and accessibility. Our preferred two-stage least squares (2SLS) estimates, which instrument for transport poverty using NYSE Arca Oil Stock Prices and OPEC oil supply (in millions of barrels), suggest that a standard deviation increase in transport poverty is associated with a decline in subjective wellbeing between 0.318 and 0.544 standard deviations. This general finding is robust to alternative ways of measuring transport poverty, alternative estimation approaches, alternative approaches to addressing endogeneity of transport poverty, and holds irrespective of whether subjective wellbeing is measured using the single-item overall life satisfaction scale or composite scales such as the Mental Health Inventory (MHI-5) scale or the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10).