Seminarium: Prottoy Aman Akbar, Aalto University

Abstract:

How do our past residential neighborhoods shape our current habits? We study this in the context of driving in Helsinki. We exploit granular data on the universe of cars and individual residential locations in Finland to show that variation in vehicle kilometers driven is explained to some extent by where drivers currently reside and to a much greater extent by where they used to reside at the age of 18. Growing up in a neighborhood with high car ownership makes drivers likely to drive more today. These results are suggestive of the importance of neighborhood exposure during early formative years in helping form habits that persist across residential locations and across decades.