Half of the people living alone do not have a car
In 2022, Belgian households had on average 1.06 cars. While 73% of Belgian households had at least one car, this is only the case for 45% of households in the Brussels-Capital Region. In addition, 49% of the people living alone did not own a personal car, compared to only 13% of couples without children and 10% of couples with at least one child. This is what emerges from Statbel's latest figures on vehicles per household in 2022.
In 2022, Belgian households had on average 1.06 cars, as in 2021. At regional level, the Brussels-Capital Region has an average rate well below the national average with 0.57 cars per household, which is a decrease of 2% compared to 2021. This low value is related to the urban nature of the Brussels territory. Walloon households have on average 1.11 cars, a number that has not changed since 2020, and Flemish households have on average 1.13 cars, which is a slight decrease of 1% compared to 2021. At municipal level, Saint-Josse-ten-Noode remains the municipality with the lowest average number of cars per household with 0.33 cars per household, while Lasne remains the municipality with the highest figure of 1.69 cars per household. Both values have respectively decreased by 3% and increased by 1% since 2021. So the number of cars per households continues to evolve very slowly from one year to the other.
In 2022, 49.1% of the people living alone did not own a personal car, and 47.6% had only one. Compared to 2021, the share of people living alone without a car has decreased by 0.2 percentage points (pp) in favour of the share of people living alone with one car. For couples without children living in the same household, 12.6% do not have a car at their disposal, a value that has remained stable since 2020. 56.7% have only one car (-0.3pp), 26.0% have two (+0.2pp) and 4.8% have at least three (+0.2pp). This trend is in line with the increase observed since 2020, very slow but steady, in the number of cars owned by people living alone and couples without children living in the same household.
Among couples living with at least one child, 9.8% do not have a car (+0.2pp). 37.1% have only one car (-0.2pp), 39.2% have two (+0.2pp) and 14.0% have at least three (+0.2pp). The share of couples having 3 cars or more goes from 4.8% for couples without children living in the same household to 14.0% for couples with children in the same the household. This contrasts with the 3.7% of single-parent families who have three or more vehicles (+0.1pp). However, 29.7% of them do not have any vehicle at all (-0.2pp), and 50.8% have only one car (as in 2021).
In order to identify households with vehicles registered in Belgium, we performed a double coupling. The first couples the annual population files with the vehicle fleet files (DIV). This makes it possible to identify cars registered in the name of a natural person. The second couples the annual population files with the tax data files (Belcotax). This makes it possible to count the number of company cars. Both groups of cars are taken into account when calculating the statistics on car ownership by households.
This double coupling is necessary because it is currently not possible to identify company cars in the vehicle fleet administrative data (DIV). Indeed, these cars are registered in the name of an enterprise without information on the type of use of the vehicle. Thus, it is not possible to distinguish them from, for example, fleets or rental cars. However, the number of company cars can be calculated based on tax returns[1] . This double coupling methodology, developed for the 2019 figures, has successfully passed several internal (in comparison with our surveys) and external (by consulting experts) validation exercises. Based on the 2019 figures, the external experts suggested an underestimation of around 150,000 company cars[2] . This represents a potential error of about 3% on the total number of coupled vehicles (5,311,000 in 2019). We continue to work on improving the quality of this statistic by refining our methodology and assessing the potential of additional administrative sources.
[1] The declaration of a vehicle can be made for self-employed company directors by declaring the ‘benefit in kind due to the use of a company car’ in tax sheet 281.20, and for employees by declaring the ‘benefit in kind due to the use of a company car’ in tax sheet 281.10.
[2] According to experts, the underestimation of the number of company cars is not due to individual citizens not declaring them since, in practice, declarations are often prepared by personnel services and social bureaus.