Source: U.S. Department of Commerce, U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey.

Percentage of Households by Number of Vehicles, 1977-2005

The above graph underlines two important trends in car ownership in the United States which can be extrapolated to other highly motorized societies:

• The number of households without cars have been reduced by about a half, from 15% in 1977 to 8% in 2005.
• The number of households with two or more cars has increased substantially, from 50% in 1977 to 58% in 2005.

An important factor behind this trend is the growing participation of women in the labor force, which often requires the ownership of a second vehicle for an household. Still, the last decade underlines a stabilization of the trend of vehicle ownership, underlining a mature market.

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Copyright © 1998-2012, Dr. Jean-Paul Rodrigue, Dept. of Global Studies & Geography, Hofstra University, New York, USA.
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