It has been 13 years since by several men on a bus in New Delhi, and died two weeks later as a result of internal injuries. The incident shocked the world and triggered a series of protests in the city. Safety and time in public transport are crucial issues, especially for women.
Insecurity and excessive time in public transport can influence the decisions of its users. For example, improving public transportation may not only expand access to better job opportunities, but also to mitigate inequalities through access to higher education. If women are more affected by lack of security, these improvements may have an even more significant impact on them.
According to the study by economist Fabiola M. Alba-Viviva (“Opportunity Bound: Transport and Access to College in Megacity”), the effects of the expansion of public transport in Lima, Peru, with the expansion of a quick access bus line and a new train line. The intervention covered areas with high concentration of universities and reduced the average time of student displacement, which previously took about two hours. The author uses administrative registration records over 10 years, where he had access to location by both higher education institutions and students’ homes.
A 17% reduction in transportation time resulted in a 6% increase in new enrollment. The effects were higher in neighborhoods that typically had low or zero rates in higher education, suggesting that this growth is associated with the entry of new students affected by the expansion of the transport system. This positive effect was driven by private universities. As the path of transportation system expansion became closer to these institutions than public, this probably contributed to the observed result.
The author classifies quality private universities based on returns in the job market. In the sample used in the study, considering the new students affected by expansion, Fabiola finds that women are more likely to attend lower quality institutions than men. They, in turn, are willing to travel up to 55% longer than women to study at institutions with higher salary returns. With the inauguration of the new lines, men tend to avoid low quality colleges, while women are more likely to enter them.
This result is no different from a study published by Girija Borker in 2020, which shows that in New Delhi, areas with higher harassment can lead women to choose lower quality colleges when they are perceived as being more safe than the best quality.
The results found by Fabiola draw the attention of how public policy design can lead to unexpected results. In the case of expansion of public transportation, clearly an important public policy can have different impacts on access to higher education as in the labor market accentuating existing gender differences.
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