Financial implications of car use and the drive to work: A social and spatial distributional analysis using income data and area classifications

Chatterton, Tim; Anable, Jillian; Cairns, Sally; Wilson, R.E.

Abstract

Using new datasets from the UK Department of Transport that permit the calculation of annual fuel costs and Vehicle Excise Duty for all private motor vehicles under 3.5 tonnes in Great Britain, this paper presents an analysis on variations in household expenditure on motoring (particularly fuel costs) across England and Wales. Building on earlier work that focussed on variations in financial impacts of motoring based on median income for areas, this analysis extends the research in two main ways. Firstly through the use of UK Office for National Statistics’ “area classifications” which allow variation in expenditure (and expenditure as a proportion of income) to be analysed in terms of eight different social profiles. Secondly, using UK Census Travel to Work data, we calculated an indicator that reflects the proportion of annual mileage driven by households in an area that is comprised of travel to and from work by car. The results indicate that use of the car and the financial implications vary between different social areas, but there tends to be a negative relationship between the proportion of income spent on motoring and the proportion of mileage used for commuting (i.e. those areas that use their cars most for driving to work, actually spend less of their income on fuel costs).

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: DEMAND Conference
• Start Date: Apr 13, 2016
• End Date: Apr 15, 2016
• Acceptance Date: Oct 5, 2016
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2016
• Deposit Date: Apr 25, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 25, 2016
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Keywords: transport, domestic energy, VED, fuel duty, costs, travel to work
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/917773
• Publisher URL: http://www.demand.ac.uk/demand-conference-2016-papers/
• Additional Information: Title of Conference or Conference Proceedings : DEMAND Conference 2016
• Contract Date: Apr 25, 2016