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 of the St. Croix River Valley counties were at or below their respective 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, lack of a vehicle would make it much harder for seniors without a vehicle to get to jobs, health care services, or volunteer activities.

• The proportion of senior households without a vehicle has been flat (Pierce County) or falling (Wisconsin, St. Croix, Polk, and Burnett Counties) for most of the period 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 fairly 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.

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