Senior Households Without a Vehicle

• In both Minnesota and Wisconsin, slightly more than one-in-ten households in which the householder was 65 or older did not have a vehicle available to them.
• All the St. Croix River Valley counties in the Wisconsin side were below the state average with respect to older householders without access to a vehicle.
• Chisago and Washington Counties have considerably higher proportions of senior households without a vehicle than their Wisconsin counterparts (Burnett, Pierce, Polk, and St. Croix Counties).
• Given the lack of public transportation in the St. Croix River Valley, the lack of a vehicle would make it much harder for seniors to get to jobs, health care services, or volunteer activities. 
   

• The proportion of senior households without a vehicle has been falling in Wisconsin (statewide) and in all counties in the Wisconsin side of the region since 2010.
• The St. Croix River Valley counties tend to have lower percentages of their senior-households who don’t have a vehicle than the Wisconsin average.
   

• The state of Minnesota has seen a slow and consistent decline in the percentage of senior households without a vehicle.
• While the percentage of senior households in Washington County without a vehicle fell from 2010 to 2017, the past two years have seen a sharp reversal of this trend.
• The proportion of Chisago County’s senior households without a vehicle has exceeded the state average for most of the past decade, though the last three years have brought this metric back down to the Minnesota average.

View spreadsheet