Vehicle ownership, purchases, and leasing: Consumer survey data

Monthly Labor Review

Volumn 120, Issue 6, 1997, Pages 34-40

  Aizcorbe, Ana ^a   Starr McCluer, Martha ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0002378158     PISSN: 00981818     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (18)

1. While the surveys also collect data on other types of vehicles (such as recreational vehicles, motorcycles, and boats), our analysis is confined to standard passenger vehicles.
2. The difference between the two surveys is not statistically significant.
3. According to data from R.L. Polk & Co., the average age of passenger cars in use was 8.1 years in 1992. See, Motor Vehicle Facts and Figures (Detroit, MI, American Automobile Manufacturers Association, 1994), p. 36.
4. Conceivably, some antique and other collectors' cars may be included in reported vehicle holdings if they are in active use. However, such cars are relatively uncommon.
5. "Polk releases latest vehicle census," Press Release (R.L Polk & Co., Statistical Services Division, July 30, 1993).
6. See Alan Greenspan and Darrel Cohen, "Motor Vehicle Stocks, Scrappage and Sales," Federal Reserve Board Finance and Economics Discussion Paper, No. 96-40 (October 1996).
7. The problem arises because the Polk vehicle stocks include scrapped vehicles that were registered over the year (prior to scrappage), but that are not counted as "scrapped" until they fail to be re-registered in the following year.
8. Greenspan and Cohen, "Motor Vehicle Stocks," discuss in detail the periodic surveys covering vehicle stocks. See also Statistical Abstract of the United States (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1994), pp. 637-38. The differences in estimates across consumer surveys likely reflect small differences in the types of motor vehicles recorded and sampling and nonsampling error.
9. Figures on sales of new vehicles are regularly decomposed into purchases by consumers and businesses.
10. The Bureau of Economic Analysis does not estimate the stock of trucks held by households.
11. Automotive News publishes aggregate figures on new leases from R.L. Polk & Co. However, these figures cover leasing by both businesses and consumers.
12. For example, among sample households in the 1992 SCF, there were 172 households leasing a vehicle, versus 101 households in the CE survey sample for the third quarter of 1992.
13. In contrast, leased vehicles represented only 2.2 percent of the total stock of vehicles held by households in the 1992 SCF.
14. Data from the 1995 SCF will shed light on the importance of this difference, because the 1995 survey included a question on leasing for business purposes.
15. See Richard Curtin, F. Thomas Juster, and James Morgan, "Survey Estimates of Wealth: An Assessment of Quality," in Robert Lipsey and Helen Stone Tice, eds., The Measurement of Saving, Investment and Wealth (Chicago, University of Chicago Press for the National Bureau of Economic Research, 1989).
16. "Financial assets" include checking, saving, money market, and call accounts. The CE survey asks only a few questions on asset holdings, so its data on wealth are not of the same quality as the data on expenditures.
17. The figures in table 5 for 1992-93 are based on CE data for the year, thus, the 1992 figures differ somewhat from table 4, which uses data from the third quarter only. Figures for 1994 are based on CE survey data collected in the first half of 1994.
18. Relatively expensive models tend to be overrepresented among leased vehicles. For example, in the 1992 SCF, the median blue book value of a leased vehicle less than 2 years old was $14,900, compared with $11,500 for a purchased vehicle of similar age. Blue book prices were obtained from N.A.D.A. Official Used Car Guide (McLean, VA, National Automotive Dealers Association).