Jun 1st, 2009 at 12:14 pm
International Comparisons of Car Ownership
Via Felix Salmon, a helpful dataset that allows me to put together this chart, showing car ownership rates in a few wealthy, sparsely populated countries:
This isn’t like comparing the United States to Denmark or the Netherlands. These are other countries with low population densities and plenty of room for development to sprawl across. But still, the consumption and lifestyle patterns appear to be quite different, with the American model much less ecologically sustainable than what’s happening in Canada or Iceland. Note that Iceland has so few people that there aren’t even any trains. There’s just a decent swathe of the population living in nice walkable communities.
Update There's a dumb misspelling in the chart itself, which I'm too lazy to fix.
39 Responses to “International Comparisons of Car Ownership”
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June 1st, 2009 at 12:15 pm
What does the y axis represent? Cars per 1000 people? It’s not labeled.
June 1st, 2009 at 12:18 pm
I could swear there are more than 800 cars in the United States.
June 1st, 2009 at 12:23 pm
You can’t really compare on this graph but I’m betting the number of cars in the countries other than the US are relatively high since those countries are not dense making a car necessary to get around a lot of the time. That said I also expect the culture in those countries to dictate modest car usage too.
June 1st, 2009 at 12:24 pm
What does the y axis represent? Cars per 1000 people? It’s not labeled.
And what kind of stupid metric is ‘X per thousand’ anyway? Why not just use ‘per hundred’ or ‘per person’ like every other reasonable statistic?
June 1st, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Learn to label your axes, Matt.
I guess this is what we get when a humanities major gets enamored with Excel.
June 1st, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Just because Canada is big and has a relatively small population does not mean its low density is comparable to the US. About 3/4 of Canadians live within 100 miles of the US border. Which means that Canada is a smaller country than it looks if you look at where the vast majority of Canadians live.
June 1st, 2009 at 12:32 pm
There are a lot of reasons for this other than a lack of “nice walkable communities.” Where are the stats that say America has less walkable communities? I think less urbanized population might be closer to the mark–places like Iceland have a very high percentage of people living in a very few places. The U.S. has a lot of people living in cities, but we also have a lot of people living in places where there is no other viable transport to get from point A to point B, even if the city or town is very walkable. Plus, a lot of Americans love to drive and just love owning cars.
June 1st, 2009 at 12:33 pm
I guess this is what we get when a humanities major gets enamored with Excel.
And, clearly, a humanities major who’s never actually had to publish anything with a quantitative component. What does MattY do with himself, professionally? Just blog all day and watch the royalty checks come in from his books? Seriously, he needs to learn to make a real argument with a real graph and defend it, preferably at a conference.
June 1st, 2009 at 12:34 pm
You can’t really compare on this graph but I’m betting the number of cars in the countries other than the US are relatively high since those countries are not dense making a car necessary to get around a lot of the time.
Daniel: It’s pretty obvious that this is the case. The point I believe being made is that these other, non-dense, car-reliant countries nonetheless are less reliant on cars than the US. So why is that?
In the case of Canada, I’d reckon a greater percentage of the population than in the US has access to excellent public transportation, because its largest, say, five metro areas generally have good public transport (super duper transport in the case of Montreal) and account for a larger share of the overall population than the US top five (and Canada imposes higher gasoline taxes than the US). So, the point is, public policy matters, and even car-crazy America could become less dependent on the automobile with the right mix of policies.
June 1st, 2009 at 12:36 pm
Iceland, as a whole, is a walkable community.
No, not really. But 2/3rds of the population of the island does live in the city of Reykjavik. I think the US’s numbers would be similar, or lower, if 130 million of us lived in New York City.
Australia and Canada’s populations use far less of their land than the American population does since so much of their countries are desert and/or frozen tundra. Australia’s population is very heavily centered on the south-eastern coast (12 million out of 22 live in Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide or Melbourne) and Canada’s on the southern border.
Ireland, OTOH, does have similar land usage as the US.
June 1st, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Ah, good point Mo. I don’t know why I said what I did earlier. I know Australia is much smaller than its geographic landmass since people mainly cluster around the cities there. Still, I’m pretty surprised by the number of cars in Australia and Canada since their populations are substantially smaller than ours.
June 1st, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Vehicle miles traveled is a better way to really show the impact of vehicle ownership.
I’m sure that the U.S. has about 10x that of any other nation, but I would be far more interested to know that number than the chart presented.
Also… Iceland? There’s really only one city in Iceland, and everyone lives there b/c the rest of the island is uninhabitable. I think similar things could be said about Australia and Canada – namely that the big expanses where not a lot of people live are no where near as hospitable to human life as in the US.
June 1st, 2009 at 12:39 pm
I would like to see statistics not on the number of cars per 1000 people, but the number of cars per household. It wouldn’t surprise me if a large part of this gap is explained by many more households in the US having 1 car per driver, as opposed to 1 car per household that all the drivers share. Of course, this is only possible if at least some of the drivers in a household don’t need a car to get to work; but I suspect there are many more places in the US where it is possible to commute to work without a car than places where it is possible/easy to live without a car at all.
June 1st, 2009 at 12:40 pm
The graph doesn’t say what Matt thinks it says. The number of automobiles per capita doesn’t tell us about walkability. For that, we’d be looking for information about number of miles traveled by car. I’m guessing that part of the difference is just that the US is wealthier, or was, and so had more cars per capita. Lots of folks I know have more cars in their household than drivers. They just divide up the trips they take among a larger number of cars. It doesn’t mean they drive more.
June 1st, 2009 at 12:40 pm
What exactly is the point here?
That Americans love cars?
June 1st, 2009 at 12:41 pm
So, the point is, public policy matters, and even car-crazy America could become less dependent on the automobile with the right mix of policies.
Jasper: That’s pretty much a given. In most American cities the public transport available is pretty bad which causes people to need cars.
June 1st, 2009 at 12:47 pm
I spent about 6 weeks in a rural part of Ireland a few years ago and I was very pleasantly surprised about the extensive bus network that existed at the time – even though I was in the middle of nowhere (ok, a farm in Tipperary – UP TIP!), it was still very easy to travel about the entire country without need of a car.
June 1st, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Ireland is about the size of Indiana.
June 1st, 2009 at 12:51 pm
If you go to the dataset you link to and click on United States, you find that “cars” and “motor vehicles” are two separate categories, and that the US has 478 cars per thousand people, while it has 765 motor vehicles per 100 P — where I assumed P stood for people, though that doesn’t really make any sense if the other number is right. If motor vehicles include trucks, buses, Vespas, everything with wheels and a motor (or do we even need wheels — are boats motor vehicles?), then it makes sense that it’s a larger number than the “cars” category, though it makes absolutely no sense that it’s this much bigger: 765 per 100 equals 7,650 per 1,000 which is sixteen times more motor vehicles than cars. Could that possibly be right?
Matt — get a grip. Go look at the numbers and figure this out and re-do. What you’ve done here, as your readers have pointed out, is nonsense.
June 1st, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Just looking at my own family, car ownership has increased over two to three decades as far as what’s considered necessary. When I was in college I knew a few kids who had their own cars. I didn’t and none of my brothers did either. I have two nephews and a niece. None of whom graduated high school without already having their own car. Despite the fact that both parents have cars, it was considered absolutely necessary for the kids to have their own cars. I grew up in a one car household and somehow we all managed to get where we needed to go, on time, and share that one car. (Many times my brother dropped me off at something on his way to whatever practice he had, or my father would drive both of us and then do whatever he needed to do…) Now, it seems no one can do that.
June 1st, 2009 at 12:55 pm
I do not understand the graph. I went to the source which stated that the US was 7th in terms of cars per 1000 people (Italy was #1). But in terms of “motorized” vehicles the US was #1 with 785 vehicles per 100 people. That means the average person has access to 7.85 motorized vehicles. That just doesn’t sound right. Maybe 785 per 1000 but the chart said 785 per “100 p.” I’m guessing that means 100 people but I couldn’t get the chart to expand to give all the information. This sounds like a Ripley’s Believe or Not statistic. If you subtract out children and the elderly, then the motorized vehicles per 100 actual regular operators of such vehicles would go through the roof. I’m willing to believe it if there is more proof.
June 1st, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Nope. The other 224,999,200 are leased.
June 1st, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Pretty hard to draw conclusions from this chart.
Vehicles per population isn’t too helpful – are we talking total population, including children? Are these all personal vehicles or does it include delivery trucks, buses, fleet vehicles?
June 1st, 2009 at 1:05 pm
I guess they include commercial fleets, taxis, big rigs, etc., but who could tell? I’d have to follow the link, and that’s NOT why I read the blogs.
June 1st, 2009 at 1:19 pm
Including all the delivery vehicles and fleet vehicles does make some sense. They do take up space. They must be parked somewhere. And they do use the highways.
Guess it depends if the question has to do with the personal wealth of Americans in terms of car ownership, or if it has to do with the total number of vehicles clogging American streets.
June 1st, 2009 at 1:21 pm
I don’t have anything to say on the matter other than to note once again that Harvard apparently does not have an atlas in the library. The wisdom of Matt’s post about rich people having better places to send their money than Harvard is thus called into question.
June 1st, 2009 at 1:31 pm
The source document has a handy definitions link. If you mouse over it it will say, “Motor vehicles per 1,000 people”.
June 1st, 2009 at 2:11 pm
It’s likely that SUVs and light trucks, which are used mainly as personal automobiles, make up a large part of the “motor vehicles” that are not “cars”.
June 1st, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Matt, that’s the greatest blog update ever written
June 1st, 2009 at 2:23 pm
Just because Canada is big and has a relatively small population does not mean its low density is comparable to the US.
Likewise Australia, which is still, really, a coastal nation as far as human population is concerned. There’s a degree of sprawliness — the Kath & Kim-burbs, if you like — but also a long-established urban core.
Ireland’s an interesting case study if you compare it to a state of the same size and population: most major roads were, until very recently, two-lane highways for large stretches. There are a few commuters to Dublin who live as far out as Waterford or Portlaoise (a nice thread here on commuting distances) but there are public transport options for that 50-80 mile distance, and it’s not as common as, say, Atlanta commuters living out in Peachtree City. It’s also possible to live in Waterford City and not feel like you’re in a dormitory town.
June 1st, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Soon we’ll be to lazy to read you.
June 1st, 2009 at 3:25 pm
In Australia they have cool diesel versions of vehicles you can only get here in gas.
If need be it’s my understanding they can run entirely on chocolate pudding fruit.
June 1st, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Most English majors have picked up the rule about hyphenating modifiers, and the sub-rule about not hyphenating modifiers that include an adverb.
So, your work is not completed when you don’t correct the spelling, you must also refuse to remove the hyphen.
June 1st, 2009 at 4:52 pm
Jeez, Matt, my family doesn’t own anything like 800 cars.
June 1st, 2009 at 6:05 pm
Careful with those axes, Eugene.
June 1st, 2009 at 6:59 pm
Re: When I was in college I knew a few kids who had their own cars.
I didn’t own a car in college (the clunker I had conked out and I didn’t bother to replace it, though I had access to ny father’s car) but when I was in high school I knew a lot of other 17 and 18 year olds with hand-me-down clunkers from parents or older siblings, just like I had.
Re: It’s likely that SUVs and light trucks, which are used mainly as personal automobiles, make up a large part of the “motor vehicles” that are not “cars”.
Motorcycles would also qualify in the category. They’re not exactly rare.
June 1st, 2009 at 8:36 pm
[...] 2009 · No Comments Via Matt Yglesias (with Felix Salmon’s help) who has constructed a useful chart comparing car ownership rates in sparsely populated countries. In other words, this compares countries such as the US, Australia and Canada rather than [...]
June 1st, 2009 at 10:49 pm
“There’s a dumb misspelling in the chart itself, which I’m too lazy to fix.”
And that is why this blog will always be less credible and less respectable, unfortunately. Sloth and carelessness are not the hallmarks of good journalism.
June 2nd, 2009 at 12:09 am
andy,
Screw Tip. UP CORK!