Fontes Lunes, F; (1992) Income distribution and the evaluation of user benefits from changes in transport systems. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

Preview

Text Fontes_Lunes_10136852_thesis.pdf Download (10MB) | Preview

Abstract

Transport policies usually affect specific social groups in different ways. Nevertheless, distributional issues have not formed part of the mainstream of research on modelling in transport planning and evaluation. Traditionally economists have thought in terms of redistribution between income groups, often with the implicit assumption that the marginal utility of income is greater for the poor than for the rich. Nevertheless, the assumption of constancy or near constancy for the marginal utility of income has often served as a basis for using Marshallian consumer's surplus as a measure of user benefits from transport systems. In this study, a framework is developed in order to estimate the benefits provided to specific income groups under alternative investment scenarios. The commonly accepted assumptions concerning household and personal incomes in transport demand modelling are reconsidered, and alternative measures of user benefits based on the trade-off between goods and leisure are examined. One of these, the compensating variation, is compared with the traditional measure of consumer's surplus for each income category. Hypothetical but realistic scenarios are constructed for analysis. These are based on matrices of journeys and travel costs by different transport modes between over two hundred districts covering Greater London. The matrices resulted from modelling exercises relating to alternative investment policies considered in a set of studies that had been carried out in the late 1980s. When applied to these scenarios, the framework demonstrated clear differences between the policies in terms of distribution of benefits across the income spectrum. Differences were also found between the estimates of travellers' monetary valuation of changes in utility level as given by the compensating variation and consumer surplus. The results are presented separately for each income category and are discussed in terms of their distributional implications in the evaluation of transport changes in large urban areas.

Download activity - last month

Export as JSONXMLCSV

Download activity - last 12 months

Export as XMLCSVJSON

Downloads by country - last 12 months

Export as XMLCSVJSON

Archive Staff Only

View Item