The Dynamics of Car Ownership in EU Countries: A Comparison Based on the European Household Panel Survey
This paper will discuss how car ownership and the number of households and individuals with access to a car has been increasing more-or-less continually over the past decades in all European Union (EU) countries. The year-to-year net changes that are observable on the aggregate national level are generally relatively small. However, these net changes conceal much more substantial changes on the individual household level. One of the objectives of this paper is to examine these changes in car ownership for individual households in a larger number of European countries. Of particular interest are those households that decrease the number of cars they own or give up car ownership completely. In order to observe such changes, it is necessary to have observations of car ownership for individual households over time, such as panel data. This study is based on the European Household Panel Survey (EHPS) that contains data for 15 countries over the period 1994 to 2001. These data are intended to be comparable for the countries included so that the survey provides a useful data source for cross-country comparisons. This is the first attempt to use the EHPS to examine car ownership on an individual household level and the results will provide a comparison of car ownership in Europe that has been unobtainable with other data sources to date. Apart from car ownership, the survey contains a wide-range of socio-economic and demographic variables for the individual countries. In addition to comparing changes in car ownership in the various countries, this paper hopes to use these data to investigate the factors behind these changes. Some examples are the influence of income, changes in employment, changing household structure and changes in residential and work location. The second objective of this study is to examine and compare the distribution of car ownership in the various countries, particularly in relation to income, but also in relation to other factors such as residential location, age and household structure. Finally, the dynamics of car ownership will be analyzed by considering changes in the distributions over time.
- Record URL:
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Corporate Authors:
Association for European Transport (AET)
1 Vernon Mews, Vernon Street, West Kensington
London W14 0RL, -
Authors:
- Dargay, Joyce
- Hivert, Laurent
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Conference:
- European Transport Conference, 2005
- Location: Strasbourg , France
- Date: 2005-10-3 to 2005-10-5
- Publication Date: 2005
Language
- English
Media Info
- Media Type: Web
- Features: References; Tables;
- Pagination: 19p
- Monograph Title: European Transport Conference, 2005 Proceedings
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: Age groups; Automobile ownership; Demographics; Households; Residential location; Travel surveys
- Identifier Terms: European Union
- Subject Areas: Highways; Planning and Forecasting; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 01353955
- Record Type: Publication
- Files: TRIS
- Created Date: Oct 19 2011 12:52PM