Christina Rogers & Gautham Nagesh:
University of Michigan study of state driver’s licensing statistics shows a sharp decline over the past two decades among people under 25 years of age getting their driver’s licenses.
The drop signals high-schoolers and college-age Americans are less interested in driving than previous generations. And the change is spreading to their parents and grandparents, moves that have auto makers scrambling to ramp up investments in alternative mobility services such car-hailing services.
Since the financial crisis of 2008, the proportion of Americans under 70 years of age holding a driver’s license has declined even as annual U.S. light-vehicle sales have slowly climbed back to levels seen early last decade, University of Michigan researchers Michael Sivak and Brandon Schoettle found.