Assessing transport equity in children’s daily travel: a systematic literature review

Transport equity has gained increasing academic attention recently. While research in this field typically focuses on socially vulnerable groups, children remain underrepresented. Since children’s daily travel differs from that of other population groups, transport equity assessments need to explicitly account for children. Despite increasing empirical attention to transport equity in children’s daily travel, the literature remains fragmented and lacks a coherent assessment framework. To fill this gap, we synthesise 61 empirical studies identified through PRISMA-guided screening. We summarise how transport-related benefits and burdens are defined and measured for children, which types of equity are applied, how disadvantaged child groups are identified, and which modelling approaches link social groups of children to the distribution of transport-related benefits and burdens. We categorise the benefits and burdens into four dimensions: accessibility/mobility, environmental exposure, safety/security, and health. Within these dimensions, child-specific indicators differ from conventional transport equity measures by emphasising accessibility to facilities beneficial to children (e.g. schools, green spaces, open spaces, and childcare facilities), school commuting, independent mobility, active travel, and free play, as well as corresponding health and safety outcomes. Furthermore, since transport-related benefits and burdens differ across age-specific child groups, transport equity assessments for children require explicit identification of relevant age groups before assessing disparities across social groups. Building on these insights, we propose a child-centred framework for assessing transport equity. Finally, we outline directions for future research, including multidimensional assessments of transport-related benefits and burdens, integrating subjective well-being into the assessment framework, conducting individual-centred data collection and analysis, paying greater attention to Global South contexts and rural areas, exploring potential nonlinear relationships between transport-related benefits or burdens and social groups, and disentangling the causal mechanisms underlying these relationships.