Household transportation expenditures in developing countries: Evidence on the effect of urban land use change from Pakistan

Applied Geography Volume 108, July 2019, Pages 39-46

Abstract

Research on the effect of rapid urbanization on households in developing countries tends to focus on the linkages between affordability, expenditures, and welfare. Unfortunately, due to data availability limitations, empirical evidence on the monetary effects of urban land use change on individual households is absent from the literature. In order to address this void in the literature, the study uses a unique travel survey to specify models of transportation expenses for a subsample of households in Lahore, Pakistan. The models of households nested within administrative units known as zones uses the respective transportation expenses for each household unit as a dependent variable as well as demographic and economic independent variables which are known to affect such expenditures. The zone level controls for the relative density of road infrastructure in each of the zones as well as stock and flow versions of an urban land use predictor obtained from remotely-sensed land cover data from 2000 and from 2009. The major contributions of the study are that household expenditures for transportation are: lower in zones that have more road infrastructure; higher in zones that became more urbanized; and lower in zones that are more proximate to the geographic center. Further, efforts by local government to rezone land toward a mixture of uses will help to offset the higher household expenditures for transportation found where urbanization is more rapid. More research is necessary, but the results offer cautious optimism on the effects of urban land use change on the welfare of households in developing countries.

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