On the Road to Equity: Examining Income-Related Inequalities in Ownership of Safer Vehicles

Arbeitspapier

Using administrative DVLA data matched with micro-data from Understanding Society – the UK Household Longitudinal Study we estimate income-related inequalities in ownership of vehicles with a set of safety features and we apply a regression-based decomposition method for rank-dependent inequality measures to estimate the source of inequalities. We find systematic pro-rich inequalities in ownership of passively safer vehicles that are almost entirely explained by the characteristics of the vehicles, mainly their price and year of manufacture. A wide range of variables measured at the household level including demographics, risk aversion and time preference proxies, personality traits, cognitive ability, and education plays a much less pronounced and, in most cases, non-statistically significant contribution to overall inequality. These findings reveal inequity in access to passively safer vehicles with potential effects on the socio-economic gap in road-traffic injuries and mortality rates, requiring regulatory intervention.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 16049

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Health: General ; Health and Inequality ; Transportation: Demand, Supply, and Congestion; Travel Time; Safety and Accidents; Transportation Noise
• Subject: income inequalities ; car's safety ; concentration indexes ; United Kingdom

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Carrieri, Vincenzo ; Davillas, Apostolos ; de Oliveira, Victor Hugo
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2023

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/272676
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:42 AM CET