Linking Elderly Transport Mobility and Subjective Well-Being

Abstract

Mobility is critical for social integration in a complex urban society and essential to the maintenance of life satisfaction and well-being. Subjective well-being has recently become a topic of interest within the transportation research community. This paper aims to understand the fundamental linkages between subjective well-being or happiness and transport mobility–travel behavior of the elderly population. The research here is based on data from the Supplement on Disability and Use of Time for 2009, which specifically targeted senior couples with an average age of 68. With the use of scores to a set of satisfaction questions about life, health, memory, finances, and marriage, latent class clusters are estimated. This estimate leads to four distinct clusters of respondents that depend on the degree of happiness in each of the satisfaction questions. With the membership of each cluster as a dependent variable, ordered probit and multinomial logistic regression models are estimated to study the relationship between clusters and individual characteristics, including sociodemographics, activity patterns, time use, and use of active modes (walking–bicycling). The results show that respondents who engage in activities out of the home, socialize, and enjoy better mobility also report higher levels of subjective well-being leading to a better quality of life. The model findings also show that illness and pain are related to lower well-being and that quality of life in older age is correlated to mobility.