CAR AVAILABILITY CHANGE IN ENGLAND AND WALES 1971-1981 - FIRST RESULTS FROM THE OPCS LONGITUDINAL-STUDY

The aggregate dynamics of car ownership have overshadowed the dynamics of car ownership and availability at the personal and household level. These dynamics have only recently been investigated in more depth. This paper contributes to this work by probing a special data source, the Longitudinal Study (LS) produced by the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys, for the changes in household car availability. The paper describes the LS and explains its special format, as a Census-based approximate to 1% sample of the population of England and Wales. The analysis focuses on the car availability dynamics of a number of groups defined by changes in their life cycle position. Special attention is given to those households where the LS member remains a dependent child throughout the study period. The results show that all studied household types increase and decrease their car holdings, but that there are patterns in this process, which vary from group to group. In particular, the size of the previous car fleet has a different influence on the current fleet size from life cycle group to life cycle group. The paper argues in its conclusion to incorporate these differentials into the further work on car ownership and car ownership change.