Life Your Commute Is Killing You

Direckshun · 05-31-2012, 09:25 AM

Long commutes suck balls, but this is particularly fascinating.

http://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0...167-5/abstract

Your Commute Is Killing You
Long commutes cause obesity, neck pain, loneliness, divorce, stress, and insomnia.
By Annie Lowrey
Posted Thursday, May 26, 2011, at 5:57 PM ET

This week, researchers at Umea University in Sweden released a startling finding: Couples in which one partner commutes for longer than 45 minutes are 40 percent likelier to divorce. The Swedes could not say why. Perhaps long-distance commuters tend to be poorer or less educated, both conditions that make divorce more common. Perhaps long transit times exacerbate corrosive marital inequalities, with one partner overburdened by child care and the other overburdened by work. But perhaps the Swedes are just telling us something we all already know, which is that commuting is bad for you. Awful, in fact.

Commuting is a migraine-inducing life-suck—a mundane task about as pleasurable as assembling flat-pack furniture or getting your license renewed, and you have to do it every day. If you are commuting, you are not spending quality time with your loved ones. You are not exercising, doing challenging work, having sex, petting your dog, or playing with your kids (or your Wii). You are not doing any of the things that make human beings happy. Instead, you are getting nauseous on a bus, jostled on a train, or cut off in traffic.

In the past decade or so, researchers have produced a significant body of research measuring the dreadfulness of a long commute. People with long transit times suffer from disproportionate pain, stress, obesity, and dissatisfaction. The joy of living in a big, exurban house, or that extra income left over from your cheap rent? It is almost certainly not worth it.

First, the research proves the most obvious point: We dislike commuting itself, finding it unpleasant and stressful. In 2006, Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and Princeton economist Alan Krueger surveyed 900 Texan women, asking them how much they enjoyed a number of common activities. Having sex came in first. Socializing after work came second. Commuting came in dead last. "Commuting in the morning appears particularly unpleasant," the researchers noted.

That unpleasantness seems to have a spillover effect: making us less happy in general. A survey conducted last year for the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, for instance,found that 40 percent of employees who spend more than 90 minutes getting home from work "experienced worry for much of the previous day." That number falls to 28 percent for those with "negligible" commutes of 10 minutes or less. Workers with very long commutes feel less rested and experience less "enjoyment," as well.

Long commutes also make us feel lonely. Robert Putnam, the famed Harvard political scientist and author of Bowling Alone, names long commuting times as one of the most robust predictors of social isolation. He posits that every 10 minutes spent commuting results in 10 percent fewer "social connections." Those social connections tend to make us feel happy and fulfilled.

Those stressful hours spent listening to drive-time radio do not merely make us less happy. They also make us less healthy. The Gallup survey, for instance, found that one in three workers with a 90-minute daily commute has recurrent neck or back problems. Our behaviors change as well, conspiring to make us less fit: When we spend more time commuting, we spend less time exercising and fixing ourselves meals at home.

According to research from Thomas James Christian of Brown University, each minute you commute is associated with "a 0.0257 minute exercise time reduction, a 0.0387 minute food preparation time reduction, and a 0.2205 minute sleep time reduction." It does not sound like much, but it adds up. Long commutes also tend to increase the chance that a worker will make "non-grocery food purchases"—buying things like fast food—and will shift into "lower-intensity" exercise.

It is commuting, not the total length of the workday, that matters, he found. Take a worker with a negligible commute and a 12-hour workday and a worker with an hourlong commute and a 10-hour workday. The former will have healthier habits than the latter, even though total time spent on the relatively stressful, unpleasant tasks is equal.

Plus, overall, people with long commutes are fatter, and national increases in commuting time are posited as one contributor to the obesity epidemic. Researchers at the University of California–Los Angeles, and Cal State–Long Beach, for instance, looked at the relationship between obesity and a number of lifestyle factors, such as physical activity. Vehicle-miles traveled had a stronger correlation with obesity than any other factor.

Direckshun · 05-31-2012, 09:26 AM

continued....

So, in summary: We hate commuting. It correlates with an increased risk of obesity, divorce, neck pain, stress, worry, and sleeplessness. It makes us eat worse and exercise less. Yet, we keep on doing it.

Indeed, average one-way commuting time has steadily crept up over the course of the past five decades, and now sits at 24 minutes (although we routinely under-report the time it really takes us to get to work). About one in six workers commutes for more than 45 minutes, each way. And about 3.5 million Americans commute a whopping 90 minutes each way—the so-called "extreme commuters," whose number has doubled since 1990, according to the Census Bureau. They collectively spend 164 billion minutes per year shuttling to and from work.

Why do people suffer through it? The answer mostly lies in a phrase forced on us by real-estate agents: "Drive until you qualify." Many of us work in towns or cities where houses are expensive. The further we move from work, the more house we can afford. Given the choice between a cramped two-bedroom apartment 10 minutes from work and a spacious four-bedroom house 45 minutes from it, we often elect the latter.

For decades, economists have been warning us that when we buy at a distance, we do not tend to take the cost of our own time into account. All the way back in 1965, for instance, the economist John Kain wrote, it is "crucial that, in making longer journeys to work, households incur larger costs in both time and money. Since time is a scarce commodity, workers should demand some compensation for the time they spend in commuting." But we tend not to, only taking the tradeoff between housing costs and transportation costs into question.

How much would we need to be compensated to make up for the hellish experience of a long commute? Two economists at the University of Zurich, Bruno Frey and Alois Stutzer, actually went about quantifying it, in a now famous 2004 paper entitled "Stress That Doesn't Pay: The Commuting Paradox." They found that for an extra hour of commuting time, you would need to be compensated with a massive 40 percent increase in salary to make it worthwhile.

But wait: Isn't the big house and the time to listen to the whole Dylan catalog worth something as well? Sure, researchers say, but not enough when it comes to the elusive metric of happiness. Given the choice between that cramped apartment and the big house, we focus on the tangible gains offered by the latter. We can see that extra bedroom. We want that extra bathtub. But we do not often use them. And we forget that additional time in the car is a constant, persistent, daily burden—if a relatively invisible one.

Do not take it lightly. People who say, "My commute is killing me!" are not exaggerators. They are realists.

Direckshun · 05-31-2012, 09:27 AM

The results of the study this story was based on:

Commuting distance was negatively associated with physical activity and CRF and positively associated with BMI, waist circumference, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, and continuous metabolic score in fully adjusted linear regression models. Logistic regression analyses yielded similar associations; however, of the models with metabolic risk indicators as outcomes, only the associations with elevated blood pressure remained significant after adjustment for physical activity and CRF.

Frazod · 05-31-2012, 09:30 AM

Commuting sucks, but not nearly as bad as living in ****ing Chicago.

Hammock Parties · 05-31-2012, 09:31 AM

Walking to work FTW

**DaKCMan AP** · 05-31-2012, 09:31 AM

My commute is 3 miles/10 mins.

**Donger** · 05-31-2012, 09:31 AM

I don't have a commute. So, I'm not dying.

Frosty · 05-31-2012, 09:37 AM

Thirteen miles of rural driving. I doubt it will kill me unless I hit a moose or logging truck.

Frazod · 05-31-2012, 09:41 AM

And my commute isn't really that bad. I live a mile from the local train station. The train ride is long, but it's relative quick (about 40 minutes) and the cars are clean and comfortable. From there, I can either take a bus to work or walk. Door-to-door is about an hour-and-a-half, but it's not like I'm fretting over it. I tend to nap in the morning and read a book at night.

OTOH, if I drove those 35 miles every day? I'd already have died of a ****ing heart attack. On those rare days when, for whatever reason, I have to drive to Chicago in rush hour traffic, it can take anywhere from an hour to two hours (or longer if there is bad weather or accidents), and that drive is a rage inducing torrent of suck. The worst day was when I got stuck driving home on Thanksgiving Wednesday, and a bad snow storm hit in the early afternoon, thereby causing the salt trucks and plows to get stuck in building traffic. Left the office at 4:00 - got home at 7:30. I wanted to murder the ****ing world.

Frosty · 05-31-2012, 09:45 AM

If I lived or worked in a city, I would commute by mass transit. I hate to drive, especially in heavy traffic.

Skyy God · 05-31-2012, 09:49 AM

But it's totally worth it to get a bigger house in the suburbs/exurbs, guys!!

Frazod · 05-31-2012, 09:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frosty

If I lived or worked in a city, I would commute by mass transit. I hate to drive, especially in heavy traffic.

Yep. I would also add that I love where I live now. Naperville is wonderful. I wake up in the morning and look out over a golf course. I see grass and trees. When I lived in Chicago, the view out my window was a gang-graffiti covered garage across a trash-strewn alley. If a long commute is the price I pay for that, so be it.

**gblowfish** · 05-31-2012, 09:55 AM

I do 75 miles round trip daily. Suck o rama.

Graystoke · 05-31-2012, 09:59 AM

My commute is the only time I get to smoke cigs, drink coffee and snort cocaine...wtf?

**DaKCMan AP** · 05-31-2012, 10:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by frazod

I wake up in the morning and look out over a golf course. I see grass and trees.

For what? 2 months out of the year?

05-31-2012, 09:25 AM
Direckshun __ Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Springpatch Casino cash: $2123447	Your Commute Is Killing You Long commutes suck balls, but this is particularly fascinating. http://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0...167-5/abstract Your Commute Is Killing You Long commutes cause obesity, neck pain, loneliness, divorce, stress, and insomnia. By Annie Lowrey Posted Thursday, May 26, 2011, at 5:57 PM ET This week, researchers at Umea University in Sweden released a startling finding: Couples in which one partner commutes for longer than 45 minutes are 40 percent likelier to divorce. The Swedes could not say why. Perhaps long-distance commuters tend to be poorer or less educated, both conditions that make divorce more common. Perhaps long transit times exacerbate corrosive marital inequalities, with one partner overburdened by child care and the other overburdened by work. But perhaps the Swedes are just telling us something we all already know, which is that commuting is bad for you. Awful, in fact. Commuting is a migraine-inducing life-suck—a mundane task about as pleasurable as assembling flat-pack furniture or getting your license renewed, and you have to do it every day. If you are commuting, you are not spending quality time with your loved ones. You are not exercising, doing challenging work, having sex, petting your dog, or playing with your kids (or your Wii). You are not doing any of the things that make human beings happy. Instead, you are getting nauseous on a bus, jostled on a train, or cut off in traffic. In the past decade or so, researchers have produced a significant body of research measuring the dreadfulness of a long commute. People with long transit times suffer from disproportionate pain, stress, obesity, and dissatisfaction. The joy of living in a big, exurban house, or that extra income left over from your cheap rent? It is almost certainly not worth it. First, the research proves the most obvious point: We dislike commuting itself, finding it unpleasant and stressful. In 2006, Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and Princeton economist Alan Krueger surveyed 900 Texan women, asking them how much they enjoyed a number of common activities. Having sex came in first. Socializing after work came second. Commuting came in dead last. "Commuting in the morning appears particularly unpleasant," the researchers noted. That unpleasantness seems to have a spillover effect: making us less happy in general. A survey conducted last year for the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, for instance,found that 40 percent of employees who spend more than 90 minutes getting home from work "experienced worry for much of the previous day." That number falls to 28 percent for those with "negligible" commutes of 10 minutes or less. Workers with very long commutes feel less rested and experience less "enjoyment," as well. Long commutes also make us feel lonely. Robert Putnam, the famed Harvard political scientist and author of Bowling Alone, names long commuting times as one of the most robust predictors of social isolation. He posits that every 10 minutes spent commuting results in 10 percent fewer "social connections." Those social connections tend to make us feel happy and fulfilled. Those stressful hours spent listening to drive-time radio do not merely make us less happy. They also make us less healthy. The Gallup survey, for instance, found that one in three workers with a 90-minute daily commute has recurrent neck or back problems. Our behaviors change as well, conspiring to make us less fit: When we spend more time commuting, we spend less time exercising and fixing ourselves meals at home. According to research from Thomas James Christian of Brown University, each minute you commute is associated with "a 0.0257 minute exercise time reduction, a 0.0387 minute food preparation time reduction, and a 0.2205 minute sleep time reduction." It does not sound like much, but it adds up. Long commutes also tend to increase the chance that a worker will make "non-grocery food purchases"—buying things like fast food—and will shift into "lower-intensity" exercise. It is commuting, not the total length of the workday, that matters, he found. Take a worker with a negligible commute and a 12-hour workday and a worker with an hourlong commute and a 10-hour workday. The former will have healthier habits than the latter, even though total time spent on the relatively stressful, unpleasant tasks is equal. Plus, overall, people with long commutes are fatter, and national increases in commuting time are posited as one contributor to the obesity epidemic. Researchers at the University of California–Los Angeles, and Cal State–Long Beach, for instance, looked at the relationship between obesity and a number of lifestyle factors, such as physical activity. Vehicle-miles traveled had a stronger correlation with obesity than any other factor.
Posts: 59,688

05-31-2012, 09:26 AM	#2
Direckshun __ Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Springpatch Casino cash: $2123447	continued.... So, in summary: We hate commuting. It correlates with an increased risk of obesity, divorce, neck pain, stress, worry, and sleeplessness. It makes us eat worse and exercise less. Yet, we keep on doing it. Indeed, average one-way commuting time has steadily crept up over the course of the past five decades, and now sits at 24 minutes (although we routinely under-report the time it really takes us to get to work). About one in six workers commutes for more than 45 minutes, each way. And about 3.5 million Americans commute a whopping 90 minutes each way—the so-called "extreme commuters," whose number has doubled since 1990, according to the Census Bureau. They collectively spend 164 billion minutes per year shuttling to and from work. Why do people suffer through it? The answer mostly lies in a phrase forced on us by real-estate agents: "Drive until you qualify." Many of us work in towns or cities where houses are expensive. The further we move from work, the more house we can afford. Given the choice between a cramped two-bedroom apartment 10 minutes from work and a spacious four-bedroom house 45 minutes from it, we often elect the latter. For decades, economists have been warning us that when we buy at a distance, we do not tend to take the cost of our own time into account. All the way back in 1965, for instance, the economist John Kain wrote, it is "crucial that, in making longer journeys to work, households incur larger costs in both time and money. Since time is a scarce commodity, workers should demand some compensation for the time they spend in commuting." But we tend not to, only taking the tradeoff between housing costs and transportation costs into question. How much would we need to be compensated to make up for the hellish experience of a long commute? Two economists at the University of Zurich, Bruno Frey and Alois Stutzer, actually went about quantifying it, in a now famous 2004 paper entitled "Stress That Doesn't Pay: The Commuting Paradox." They found that for an extra hour of commuting time, you would need to be compensated with a massive 40 percent increase in salary to make it worthwhile. But wait: Isn't the big house and the time to listen to the whole Dylan catalog worth something as well? Sure, researchers say, but not enough when it comes to the elusive metric of happiness. Given the choice between that cramped apartment and the big house, we focus on the tangible gains offered by the latter. We can see that extra bedroom. We want that extra bathtub. But we do not often use them. And we forget that additional time in the car is a constant, persistent, daily burden—if a relatively invisible one. Do not take it lightly. People who say, "My commute is killing me!" are not exaggerators. They are realists.
Posts: 59,688

05-31-2012, 09:27 AM	#3
Direckshun __ Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Springpatch Casino cash: $2123447	The results of the study this story was based on: Commuting distance was negatively associated with physical activity and CRF and positively associated with BMI, waist circumference, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, and continuous metabolic score in fully adjusted linear regression models. Logistic regression analyses yielded similar associations; however, of the models with metabolic risk indicators as outcomes, only the associations with elevated blood pressure remained significant after adjustment for physical activity and CRF.
Posts: 59,688

05-31-2012, 09:30 AM	#4
Frazod Did you hear what I said? Join Date: Aug 2000 Casino cash: $-556615	Commuting sucks, but not nearly as bad as living in ****ing Chicago.
Posts: 121,704

05-31-2012, 09:31 AM	#5
Hammock Parties I'll be back. Join Date: Nov 2002 Casino cash: $1030478	Walking to work FTW __________________ Chiefs game films
Posts: 296,717

05-31-2012, 09:31 AM	#6
DaKCMan AP Beloved & Awesome CP Celebrity Join Date: Aug 2000 Location: Florida Casino cash: $5674952	My commute is 3 miles/10 mins. __________________
Posts: 35,714

05-31-2012, 09:31 AM	#7
Donger "Think BOOM!" Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: 33.675° N 106.475° W Casino cash: $6949900 VARSITY	I don't have a commute. So, I'm not dying. __________________ I think the young people enjoy it when I "get down," verbally, don't you?
Posts: 190,754

05-31-2012, 09:37 AM	#8
Frosty Go Beavers! Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Washington Casino cash: $3518243	Thirteen miles of rural driving. I doubt it will kill me unless I hit a moose or logging truck.
Posts: 14,537

05-31-2012, 09:41 AM	#9
Frazod Did you hear what I said? Join Date: Aug 2000 Casino cash: $-556615	And my commute isn't really that bad. I live a mile from the local train station. The train ride is long, but it's relative quick (about 40 minutes) and the cars are clean and comfortable. From there, I can either take a bus to work or walk. Door-to-door is about an hour-and-a-half, but it's not like I'm fretting over it. I tend to nap in the morning and read a book at night. OTOH, if I drove those 35 miles every day? I'd already have died of a **ing heart attack. On those rare days when, for whatever reason, I have to drive to Chicago in rush hour traffic, it can take anywhere from an hour to two hours (or longer if there is bad weather or accidents), and that drive is a rage inducing torrent of suck. The worst day was when I got stuck driving home on Thanksgiving Wednesday, and a bad snow storm hit in the early afternoon, thereby causing the salt trucks and plows to get stuck in building traffic. Left the office at 4:00 - got home at 7:30. I wanted to murder the **ing world.
Posts: 121,704

05-31-2012, 09:45 AM	#10
Frosty Go Beavers! Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Washington Casino cash: $3518243	If I lived or worked in a city, I would commute by mass transit. I hate to drive, especially in heavy traffic.
Posts: 14,537

05-31-2012, 09:49 AM	#11
Skyy God 11-5, baby Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Livin the dream Casino cash: $2191557	But it's totally worth it to get a bigger house in the suburbs/exurbs, guys!!
Posts: 22,416

05-31-2012, 09:55 AM	#13
gblowfish Be Kind To Your Pets Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Glorious Independence, MO Casino cash: $16896178 VARSITY	I do 75 miles round trip daily. Suck o rama.
Posts: 41,011

05-31-2012, 09:59 AM	#14
Graystoke MVP Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Driftless Region Casino cash: $-2430000	My commute is the only time I get to smoke cigs, drink coffee and snort cocaine...wtf?
Posts: 9,606