Actually, millennials don't own fewer cars
In his paper “Generational Trends in Vehicle Ownership and Use: Are Millennials Any Different?,” Knittel finds that no, millennials are not different, at least when it comes to owning as many cars as baby boomers. They do, however, put more miles on their cars compared to the older generation.
“While we find that millennials are altering life-choices that affect vehicle ownership, the net effect of these endogenous choices is to reduce vehicle ownership by less than 1%,” Knittel and his co-author, Elizabeth Murphy of Genser Energy, write.
Knittel and Murphy used data from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Household Transportation Survey, the U.S. Census, and the American Community Survey for their research on household vehicle ownership, and vehicle usage (measured in annual vehicle miles traveled, or VMT).
The various data sets range from 1990 to as recently as 2017. While there’s disagreement on the official age range for millennials — the Pew Research Center deems anyone born between 1981 and 1996 a millennial — for this study, “millennial” was assigned to heads of households born between 1980 and 1994. The only generation the U.S. Census Bureau defines is baby boomers; people born between 1946 and 1964.
