Commuting Time and Labour Supply in the Netherlands

We examine whether commuting time has any effect on worker labour supply, using the Dutch Time Use Surveys of 2000 and 2005. Our results show an inverted U-shaped relationship between commuting time and labour market supply of men and women, with a maximum reached at 3.22 hours of commuting per day. We use Propensity Score Matching to deal with potential endogeneity between labour supply and commuting time. Our results indicate that commuting is positively related to work duration within certain time-space constraints, but later, physical capability constraints come into play.