Transport and child well-being: An integrative review

Understanding children's travel is an important part of drawing a complete picture of over-all well-being in society. Children's active travel to school, independent travel, transport and physical activity, and crashes have been reviewed, yet it may not be a complete picture. If research on children's travel has the ultimate goal of improving children's well-being, there is currently no general synthesis on the research linking transport and child well-being. This integrative review asks, “what evidence is there that transport affects child well-being?” It organizes the findings by two key measures: the domain of well-being and the transport means-of-influence. The five main domains of child well-being are: physical, psychological, cognitive, social, and economic. The three means of transport influence are: as access, intrinsic, or external. Findings are identified as being consistent, inconsistent, or one-off (e.g. only one study). The results show that transport plays a role in all domains of children's well-being. Most benefits identified are associated with active travel and independent travel. Most negative impacts are associated with traffic. While numerous one-off results exist which suggest that there may be many other impacts, research that repeats prior work is needed to support or refute these such results. Finally, potential relationships between transport and well-being are suggested.