The Impact of the Four-day School Week on Travel among Households with Children in Minnesota
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The Impact of the Four-day School Week on Travel among Households with Children in Minnesota
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2012
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University of Minnesota Extension Center for Community Vitality
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Between 2008 and 2012, thirteen Minnesota school districts switched from the traditional five-day school week to a four-day week, giving students one additional day off each week. This study examined the impact that the adoption of a four-day school week has had on the travel patterns of households with children in Minnesota.
The study found that the four-day school schedule caused statistically significant, sizable increases in “day trips” -- trips that are at least 50 miles away from home but require no overnight stay. The number and nature of “weekend trips” remained unaffected by the four-day week. The study found that households in four and five-day districts took the same number of trips, with a similar number of travelers, had similar lengths of stay and spent similar amounts of money on weekend trips. The increase in day trips may, however, have come at the cost of longer vacation travel -- trips of five days or longer. The study found a significantly smaller number of longer trips reported by parents in four-day districts than by similar parents in five-day districts. Approximately one in three families took one less long trip over a two year period, due to the four-day week (a 27 percent change from the number of trips taken by the average family in this sample). This resulted in a similar percent drop in nights spent in hotels (nearly 1.5 nights for a 28 percent decline) and overall expenditures ($675 for a 29 percent decline). The long trips that four-day households skipped were disproportionally in-state. Four-day week families were nine percentage points less likely to take an in-state trip (a 40 percent drop from the
average share of in state trips in the sample). Among households that traveled at least once, one in five took one fewer trip in-state (a 49 percent change from the sample average). This implied an 11 percentage point (or 61 percent from the sample average) decline in the probability of having used a MN hotel over a two year period.
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Previously Published Citation
Mykerezi, Elton; Nash, Arthur. (2012) The Impact of the Four-day School Week on Travel among Households with Children in Minnesota. University of Minnesota Extension Center for Community Vitality. Retrieved from the University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy,
Suggested citation
Mykerezi, Elton; Nash, Arthur. (2012). The Impact of the Four-day School Week on Travel among Households with Children in Minnesota. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/167879.
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