Tired of Commuting? Relationships among Journeys to School, Sleep, and Exercise among American Teenagers

Abstract

Public education policies that aim to improve educational outcomes can have the effect of increasing the distance that many students must travel to attend school. In this article, we use American Time Use Survey data to examine whether longer school commutes influence time spent on important health-promoting activities. We find school commute time to be strongly inversely related to time spent sleeping, and negatively related to time spent exercising for those with long commutes. Thus, increasing journey to school distances may have troubling public health implications for teens.