How poverty restricts elderly Germans’ everyday travel

Abstract

Purpose Many elderly people are affected by poverty. Furthermore, old-age poverty is likely to increase in the future. However, the everyday travel behaviour of disadvantaged elderly people is not a focus of German transport research. Against this background, the aim of this paper is to examine the everyday travel of older people (65+) at risk of poverty using the example of Germany. Methods The empirical analysis is based on the country-wide survey BMobility in Germany 2008^. A logistic regression has been undertaken alongside descriptive statistical analyses. Results The analysis shows that elderly people at risk of poverty are less mobile, are restricted in their access to transport, make significantly fewer trips and cover less distance daily than the group with above-average income. Furthermore, the trips of disadvantaged older women in low-status residential areas are rather concentrated on the local residential environment. Conclusions The travel behaviour of elderly people is different depending on their income and gender. Disadvantaged older women in particular are characterised by limited mobility options and restricted everyday travel, which is concentrated to the local area even in deprived neighbourhoods. Further research has to examine if these restrictions lead to unsatisfied daily needs and could threaten the social participation of this growing group.

Social exclusion of older persons: a scoping review and conceptual framework

“…Exclusion in relation to transport and mobility focused on exclusionary processes stemming from lack of service flexibility, dependency on private transport options, disability and built environment access, and rural transport systems (e.g. Engels and Liu 2011 ; Giesel and Köhler 2015 ). The dimensions of area-based exclusion (e.g.…”

Factors Associated with Travel Behavior of Millennials and Older Adults: A Scoping Review

“…The rate of decrease in license holding and access to a car with increasing age is higher for women [43,65]. Compared to men, older women are also found to make fewer trips and more short-distance trips as they age [28,34,46,62,65]. The rate of using or having knowledge of shared mobility options, such as ridesharing services (i.e., Uber/Lyft) is very low among older adults, and use decreases with increasing age [66,67].…”

“…Older adults usually make shorter trips and their overall trip length declines with age [20,34,38,56,[62][63][64]. As revealed by Moniruzzaman et al [28] and Yang et al [64], the likelihood of walking and walking trip length also declines with increasing age.…”

“…Income is a strong predictor of defining travel behavior, with increasing income or rise in affordability increasing trip frequency [20], automobility [4,63], and multimodality [63] among older adults. Also, higher income tends to decrease transit use [20,28,40] and the number of short distance trips [62]. High-income older adults are less likely to realize the need for alternative transport [68] as most of them have convenient transport options available to them.…”

Estimation of Origin-Destination Flows of Passenger Cars in 1925 in Old Tokyo City, Japan

“…In addition, the results of these surveys have been compiled and disclosed to the public and it is possible to acquire and use them easily. For example, the "National Travel Survey" (NTS) in the UK, the "National Household Travel Survey" (NHTS) in the US, and the "Mobility in Germany" survey have been conducted, and many studies using the data from these surveys have been carried out [1][2][3]. In Japan, the Person Trip (PT) survey and the Road Traffic Census (RTC) have been carried out since after World War II.…”