La Mobilitat habitual per treball a Catalunya : evolució recent (1986-2006) i característiques demogràfiques

Abstract

This paper aims at analyzing recent trends of labour commuting in Catalonia maximizing the temporal data coverage of this phenomenon. Harmonizing the basic characteristics of two different data sources, the statistics associated to population registers and censuses from 1986, 1991, 1996 and 2001; and the Living Conditions Survey from 2006, has been necessary.
We need to overuse of the word increase to summarize the recent trends of labour commuting in Catalonia. The evolution of commuting in the recent years can be decomposed into three different elements pointing in the same direction: an increase of employment, an increase of dissociation between municipality of residence and work municipality, and an increase of the distance between both municipalities.
The age and sex structure of commuting shows that men are generally more likely to move than women. Nevertheless, the mode of transport is the variable showing more differences. Hence, men use private transport in a remarkable higher proportion than women. It is also interesting to analyze if these differences remain among young cohorts or, by contrast, it is a behaviour from previous cohorts with a clear tendency to disappear. Results prove that although difference is reduced it will not disappear in the short or medium term.