Ageing cars and car owners: Changing distribution of car ownership in Hungary

Since the 2008 global economic crisis fewer people living in Budapest own a car. The number of car owners above 60 is increasing, and so is the average age of cars, origo.hu reports.

According to the 2008 survey, 42pc of Hungarian households owned a car, 5pc of them more than one. The number of single-car owners dropped to 40pc in 2010 and this data showed no change in the next four years. The number of multiple-car owners, however, began to decrease: it was still 5pc in 2010, then 4pc in 2012, and in 2014, only 2pc of households owned more than one car.

This year, 44pc of Hungarian households own a car, out of which single-car owners amount to 39 pc, a 1pc decrease from two years ago, while the number of multiple-car owners increased by 3pc, thus reaching 5pc, the survey of the Robert Bosch Ltd. and the Medián public opinion and market research institute revealed. The survey is administered by the two companies every two years since the beginning of the 2008 global economic and financial crisis.

The distribution of car owners according to age shows a particularly interesting tendency: since 2008, the number of car owners aged 30-49 has decreased, while more people above 60 own cars. According to the 2008 survey, 56pc of the 30-49 age group owned cars; by 2016, this number has dropped to 53pc. There is an even more striking difference in the number of car owners over 60: in 2008, 20pc of the older generation owned cars, which became 22pc in 2010, 23pc in 2012, 29pc in 2014, and 30pc in 2016.

While the number of car owners in countryside cities and towns is slowly increasing, the survey revealing 41pc in 2008 and 46pc in 2016, the people of Budapest show a definite decline when it comes to car ownership.  In 2008, 42pc of them had a car, and while this number was 44pc in 2010 and 2012, in 2014, it dropped to 40pc, and this year, only 35pc of people living in Budapest reported having their own cars.

According to origo.hu, there is also a statistically noticeable increase in the age of Hungarian cars. The average age of cars in 2008 was 10 years, which became 13.2 by 2016. In 2008, 8pc of car owners had a new, 0-2 year old car; this number dropped to 2pc this year. The 3-5 year old cars constituted 22pc of vehicles in 2008; this ratio decreased to 9pc as well. The greatest increase was measured in the case of 11-20 year old cars: in 2008, 34pc of car owners used older cars, while in 2016, 49pc reported owning cars in this age group.

There has also been a small, but statistically measurable and fascinating change in the distribution of vehicles according to owners’ educational attainment. Recent tendencies show that there is an inverse relationship between people’s qualifications and their likelihood of being car owners. In 2008, 15pc of primary school graduates, that is, those who finished 8^th grade owned a car; this number is 18pc in 2016. Although among people with higher qualifications, such as those with vocational training or secondary school degrees, the percentage of car owners is higher on average, these numbers seem to be on the decline. The data appears most striking among university graduates, 66pc of whom owned a car in 2008, while in 2016, this number is only 62pc.

Copy editor: bm

Source: origo.hu