household and individual characteristics
CHAPTER STRUCTURE
In this chapter, we describe the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of the Austin area commuters. The next section presents the household characteristics of commuters, including household size and structure, household income, housing characteristics, internet use at home, and auto-ownership. The subsequent section presents the individual characteristics of commuters, including demographic, socio-economic, and work-related attributes.
HOUSEHOLD CHARACTERISTICS
Household Size and Structure
The household size results (see Figure 1) indicate that close to 90% of the commuter households have a household size of 4 or fewer individuals. Among the 2 person households, about 72% are couple families (two individuals of the opposite sex who are either married, or unmarried but characterize their relationship to one another as a partnership), 10% are single parent families (with the son or daughter being a child less than 18 years of age), and 10% are unrelated person families or same-sex couple families (the remaining 8% are distributed across other household types). Among the 3- and 4-person households, about 60% are nuclear family households (opposite-sex couples with children, all children being less than 18 years of age), 3% are single parent families, and 25% are returning young adult families (these are families with one or both parents and one or more sons/daughters, with at least one of the sons/daughters being 18 years or older).
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Austin family structures are getting rather diverse, and moving away from the traditional one-worker couple/nuclear family structure…. This has important implications on commute travel characteristics and traffic congestion levels.
igure 1. Distribution of household size
The distribution of family type is provided in Figure 2, which indicates that only about a quarter of all worker families are nuclear family households, with another fifth being couples. Among the nuclear family households, both adults work in 66% of households, while only one adult works in the remaining 34% of households. Among couple households, both adults work in 77% of the households. Overall, only 13% of all Austin area worker households are “traditional” family households (i.e., couple or nuclear families in which one adult works and the other is a homemaker). It is also significant that close to a quarter of all worker families are single person households, suggesting that the Austin commuter work force is rather young and substantially career-oriented. Further, about 4% of the worker families are single parent households, 13% are returning young adult households, and 10% are other kinds of households (mixtures of related and unrelated members). These statistics reinforce the fact that Austin family structures are getting rather diverse, and moving away from the traditional one-worker couple/nuclear family structure. As we discuss later, this has important implications on commute travel characteristics and traffic congestion levels.
Figure 2. Distribution of family types
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