Half of Iranian Households Don’t Own a Car, Stats Show
More than 46% of urban Iranian households and 64% of rural households do not own a car, official statistics show, despite a marked overall increase in car ownership rates in the past 15 years.
Comparing the number of vehicles with the number of households, there are 1.4 cars for every household in Iran. However, there are marked differences between urban and rural areas.
Based on the Iran Statistical Center’s 2020 Household Income/Expense Report, ownership of private cars in urban households reached 54%, while only 36% of rural households owned a car.
Iranian Police data, citing the Iran Statistics Center, shows that the total number of registered vehicles totalled 36,323,701 in 2020. Divided by 26,384,000, the reported number of Iranian households, this equals a ratio of 1.4 vehicles per household.
Multiplying the total rate of car ownership by the estimated number of rural households implies that 13.1 million households (11 million urban and 2.1 million rural households) own private cars.
Iran Statistics Center data also show that about 13% of urban and 25% of rural households own motorcycles.
Examining household income and expenses between 2006 and 2020 shows that car ownership has increased by 70% in the last 15 years. About 31% of urban households had a private car in 2006. This number increased to nearly 54% in 2020.
On the other hand, motorcycle and bicycle ownership decreased by 35% during the same period. In 2006, about a fifth of urban households had motorcycles or bicycles. In 2020, the motorcycle ownership rate decreased to less than 13%, while the bicycle ownership rate decreased to about 10%.
Separately, an examination of the ownership rates of household appliances indicates that the ownership of dishwashers and microwave ovens has increased in the last 15 years.
In 2006, less than 2% of Iranian households had a dishwasher. This rate has increased to a little over 8% in 2020.
Microwave oven ownership has also increased, from less than 6% in 2011 to about 12% in 2020.
