Worldwide, "Commuting Time" Is The Biggest Determinant Of People's Ability To Exit Poverty

Where the poor can get where they're going, they can get ahead. "In a large, continuing study of upward mobility based at Harvard, commuting time has emerged as the single strongest factor in the odds of escaping poverty. The longer an average commute in a given county, the worse the chances of low-income families there moving up the ladder. The impact of transportation on social mobility is stronger than several other factors, like crime, elementary-school test scores or the percentage of two-parent families in a community, said Nathaniel Hendren, a Harvard economist and one of the researchers on the study."Mikayla Bouchard in The New York Times