Elsevier

Transport Policy

Volume 105, May 2021, Pages 22-34
Transport Policy

The effects of driver licensing laws on immigrant travel

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tranpol.2021.02.010Get rights and content

Highlights

  • This study examines how US driver licensing laws influence immigrant travel.

  • Permissive licensing increases driving in and taking rides in carpools.

  • Permissive licensing does not affect VMT or the number of drive alone trips.

  • Results suggest small but important gains in mobility for immigrant groups.

Abstract

Car use is critical to improving access to opportunities, especially for low-wage immigrants whose jobs are dispersed and when transit service is minimal. But many states have restricted the ability of undocumented immigrants to obtain drivers licenses, making it potentially difficult for them to improve their economic standing. The effects of these laws have been tested for their association with traffic safety but not on mode choice itself. Using the two most recent versions of the National Household Travel Survey, I fit a series of difference-in-difference models to estimate the effect of permissive immigrant driver licensing on travel outcomes. Permissive licensing increased the rate of giving rides by about 13% and increased the rate of getting a ride by about 6.5%, but changes to driving alone were insignificant. Results suggest permissive licensing has beneficial accessibility impacts for all immigrants in addition to the positive safety and economic externalities documented elsewhere.

Introduction

While planners and policymakers often seek to encourage alternatives to private auto use through priorities such as transit service, pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, compact land development, and road pricing, the reality of metropolitan land structure and the distribution of opportunities in the United States makes it extremely difficult to navigate life without a car. Car ownership and use increases access to jobs and essential services, even in central city locations where public transit has a spatial advantage (Grengs 2010, 2012). And though early in the 2000s city growth outpaced suburban growth giving a boost to transit ridership, the suburbs continued to add people and have now recaptured the majority of population growth (Frey 2018). In most of the country, the dominance of the private automobile looks to be secure because it is an essential tool for mobility.

These trends have special relevance for immigrants to the United States. Although migrants seeking new opportunities continue to settle in traditional sites of immigration such as New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, increasingly they are choosing to live in smaller metropolitan areas or to bypass central cities for suburbs where alternative transportation options are less robust (Wilson and Svajlenka 2014; Snyder 2015). Particularly for low-income immigrants with few financial resources, cars can be important tools to prevent workers from staying in or straying into poverty. Those with access to vehicles tend to find jobs and keep them even if public transit is easily accessible (Ong 2002; Cervero et al. 2002; Blumenberg 2016). In places like the southern United States where immigration is a newer phenomenon, lack of access to a vehicle can both restrict personal opportunity and lead to cultural isolation if people must self-segregate into neighborhoods where public transit is a feasible alternative (Bohon et al. 2008).

Those who lack the proper documentation for residence in the United States face further restrictions on car access: most states limit the issuance of drivers licenses to those who can prove legal entry as a permanent resident and to citizens. Nevertheless, 17 jurisdictions in the United States permit undocumented immigrants to obtain licenses (National Conference of State Legislatures, 2020), with other state legislatures periodically submitting bills to allow it. Approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants live in the United States (Passel and Cohn, 2018) and over 4 million, or about 5 percent of all immigrants, live in states where they are eligible to obtain drivers licenses. However, of the ten states with the highest number of undocumented immigrants, only New York, California, and Illinois permit undocumented immigrants to drive—with New York having passed legislation only within the last year—suggesting a significant disparity in access to opportunities. While the effects of these laws have been analyzed for their second-order impacts related to car use such as traffic safety, no study has yet investigated how permissive licensing affects car use itself among immigrants. This study addresses this gap in the travel behavior literature. In this paper, I present results from several difference-in-difference models that test the effects of permissive licensing laws on immigrant travel using nationally-representative daily trip data. I find that immigrants who live in states that passed such laws carpooled slightly more often and were more likely to switch from transit to driving after the laws were implemented. There was no significant change in vehicle miles traveled (VMT) generated or in the number of trips driven alone. In the remainder of this paper, I describe the context of immigrant travel and driver licensing laws and argue, given the results of the study, for the importance of immigrant-supportive driver licensing as a transportation equity issue.

Section snippets

Immigrant travel behavior

Immigrants to the United States are less likely to drive than their US-born counterparts even after controlling for a variety of socioeconomic and built environment characteristics (Blumenberg 2009; Chatman and Klein 2009; Tal and Handy 2010; Chatman 2014). Nevertheless, car use remains a critical component of the set of immigrants’ travel options, and carpooling particularly so. Immigrants are more likely to form carpools with both household members and others than the US-born even when

Data and methodology

This study estimates the effects of driver licensing laws on immigrant travel. For simplicity, I refer to states that passed driver licensing laws that permit undocumented immigrants to drive as “permissive license law” states. I ask three related research questions about immigrant travel and permissive laws:

  • 1.

    Have permissive license laws affected vehicle miles traveled (VMT)?

  • 2.

    Have permissive license laws affected the number of driving and carpooling trips?

  • 3

    Have permissive license laws affected

Results

This section describes the model results for each of the three research questions in the study. I present coefficient plots for the immigrant-related and policy variables in the main text; full model results are available in the appendix. On the whole, the implementation of permissive license laws had small effects on carpooling but no statistically distinguishable effects on driving alone.

Discussion and conclusion

Historical data has shown that immigrants to the United States drive alone less than their US-born counterparts, relying on shared modes and walking for a greater share of their travel. This pattern holds true in the most recent travel data available. State-level policies in the form of legislation that permits undocumented immigrants to obtain drivers licenses appear to have some effects on travel as well. Covariate-balanced and adjusted difference-in-difference models indicated that

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Dan Chatman, Aditya Medury, Kelcie Ralph, and the anonymous peer reviewers for their constructive comments on earlier drafts of this article. This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Jesus M. Barajas: Sole author.

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