Different worlds of non-motoring: households without cars in Germany

The composition of the carless population is arguably a good indicator for the level of car dependence of a local area. Indeed, the group of households without a car in inner cities is not only larger, but also more diverse in terms of socio-demographic composition and more mobile in terms of travel behaviour. By contrast, non-car ownership in peripheral and rural areas is rarer and more concentrated in marginal social groups, who are also less mobile overall. In this paper, I provide evidence to support this hypothesis on the basis of a secondary analysis of the German national travel survey for the year 2008. Applying latent class analysis to a battery of items on the reasons for not owning a car, I put forward a typology of carless households, and then discuss how it varies across different types of area