In Belgium, in 2021, 27% of households have no car, 47.1% have one, 20.3% have two and 5.6% have more than two.

There are very large differences between the regions: 53.7% of households in the Brussels-Capital Region have no car, compared with 25% of Walloon households and 22.9% of Flemish households.

The type of household has a strong influence on whether or not one owns a car. 49.3% of those living alone do not own a car and 47.4% of them own one.

Among couples with no children living at home, 12.6% do not have a car. 57.0% have one, 25.8% have two and 4.6% have three or more. Among couples with at least one child living at home, 9.6% do not own a car. 37.3% have one car at their disposal, 39.4% have two and 13.8% have at least three. So the share of couples with three or more cars rises from 4.6% for couples with no children living at home to 13.8% for couples with children living at home. This contrasts with single-parent families, of which only 3.6% have three or more cars. 29.9% of them, however, have no car at all and 50.8% have one car.

Belgian households own an average of 1.06 cars

At regional level, the Brussels-Capital Region is well below the national average with 0.58 cars per household. Walloon households own on average 1.11 cars and Flemish households 1.14.

At municipal level, Saint-Josse-ten-Noode remains the Belgian municipality with the lowest average number of cars per household, at 0.34 cars per household. The municipality of Woluwe-Saint-Pierre reaches a level of 0.92 cars per household, the highest level for the Brussels-Capital Region, but well below the Belgian average.
Lasne is the Belgian municipality where this figure is the highest with 1.68 cars per household, while in the province of Walloon Brabant, households own an average of 1.29 cars.

Average number of vehicles per household, provinces and regions in 2021

Average number of vehicles per household, Brussels municipalities, 2021

Methodology

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 household car ownership. 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 (by 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^[1]. 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.