Household car use in France: a demographic and economic analysis

In this article, we set out to evaluate each of these effects with regard to French households. It is structured in the following way. Firstly, we study the importance of considering the effects of age and generation jointly in the analysis of household car mileage behavior. It is illustrated by showing that cohorts of households at the same age generally present a difference in car use, which tends to hold true at nearby age ranges. Next, we discuss the effect of fuel price volatility on household car use. From a theoretical point of view, volatility can be perceived as a source of uncertainty about fuel price, and its increase should entail a decrease in car use with respect to risk-averse households. Subsequently, we briefly present the annual Car Fleet survey and its use to establish a pseudo-panel of household generational cohorts over the 1988-2008 period. Then, the Age-Cohort-Period model is applied to analyze the average household car mileage of cohorts, by disentangling the effects of age and generation. The impacts of income, fuel price level and fuel price volatility on car use are also evaluated. The estimation results are provided and commented on the final section