90% of couples with children have a car
90% of couples with children have a car
In 2023, 72% of Belgian households have at least one car. While this percentage is nearly 90% for couples with children, it is only 69% for lone parents. Furthermore, one person living alone out of two does not have a car.
In 2023, Belgian households had on average 1.06 cars. This value has remained unchanged since 2021. At regional level, the Brussels-Capital Region has an average rate well below the national average with 0.55 cars per household. This value is down by 3.5% compared to 2022 and has been decreasing since 2021. This low value is related to the urban nature of the Brussels territory. Walloon households have on average 1.11 cars, a number unchanged since 2020, and Flemish households have on average 1.13 cars, also unchanged since 2022. At municipal level, Saint-Josse-ten-Noode remains the municipality with the lowest average number of cars per household with 0.32 cars per household, while Lasne remains the municipality with the highest figure: 1.68 cars per household. Both values have decreased by 3% and 0.6% respectively compared to 2022. So the number of cars per household continues to evolve very slowly from one year to the other.
Nearly half of single people do not have a car
In 2023, 49.3% of people living alone did not own a passenger car, and 47.3% had only one. Compared to 2022, the share of single people with only one car has fallen by 0.3 percentage points (pp) to its lowest value since 2020, to the benefit of the share of single people without a car (+0.2pp) and those with two cars (+0.1pp). For couples without children living in the same household, 12.8% do not have a car, which is a slight increase (+0.2pp) compared to the previous year. 56.3% have only one car (-0.4pp), 26.0% have two (+0pp) and 4.9% have at least three (+0.1pp).
Whether they are single people or couples without children under the same roof, the proportion of these households owning exactly one car is therefore falling slightly. On the other hand, more of these households own two or more cars, or none at all.
90% of couples with children have at least one car
Among couples living with at least one child, 10.1% do not have a car. This increase of 0.3 percentage points compared to 2022 is in line with the rise observed since 2021. 37.2% have only one car (+0.1pp), 38.8% have two (-0.4pp) and 14.0% have at least three (+0pp). The share of couples having three cars or more goes from 4.9% 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 (+0pp). However, 30.5% of them do not have any vehicle at all (+0.8pp), and 50.2% have only one car (-0.6pp).
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.