Children from High-income families may not be happy in commuting to school-- evidence from China

Abstract

The uneven distribution of high-quality education resources leads to an increasing number of children choosing schools far from their homes, resulting in longer commuting times. This not only occupies the rest time of parents and children, but also reduces their happiness. Taking Lixia District of Jinan as a research area, this paper uses the Thiessen Polygon Method to define school districts, introduces the actual weight of children's school selection based on children’s OD data of commuting to school, combines the 4×1767×62 travel planning data obtained from Autonade API platform to jointly build the model of actual accessibility to commuting to school and the model of accessibility to commuting to school within school districts, and then studies the accessibility and transportation equity of households with different income in commuting to school. The results show that there are great differences in flow characteristics, accessibility and transportation equity of households with different income, and the dynamic spatial characteristics of children's commuting to school are affected by household income. Specifically, the actual accessibility of high-income households is smaller than that of other households, indicating that the children from high-income households spend longer time in commuting to school, and take up more of their rest time, which reduces their senses of satisfaction and happiness. Compared with the actual commuting to school, in commuting to school within school districts, the difference between households with different income has a greater impact on transportation inequality. Therefore, promoting reasonable and organized school selection processes can effectively reduce transportation accessibility gaps among households. This research contributes to enhancing urban accessibility and travel efficiency, and provide a basis for governments to formulate fairer and more rational transport policies.