Shifting Demographics: In The U.S., More Women Drive Than Men

November 15, 2012 11:10 AM " As we saw during last week’s election, the demographics of the U.S. are changing. Older white men — once the country’s key voting block — make up an increasingly small percentage of the electorate, while African Americans, Latinos, and women are gaining ground.

A similar demographic shift is taking shape on the roadways. According to a new study from Michael Sivak and colleague Brandon Schoettle at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, older men (of all races and ethnicities) are less likely than women to drive after age 45 — and the gender gap could get much wider.

UMTRI study

The Washington Post reports that Sivak and Schoettle reviewed 15 years’ worth of U.S. driver’s licence statistics, from 1995 to 2010. In 1995, 89.2 million men held licences, compared to 87.4 million American women. Men held their lead over women in every age group until age 70, when the trend flipped, perhaps in part to women’s longer life-expectancies.

But life-expectancy alone can’t account for the shift that researchers are seeing today "

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