How do baby boomers travel differently from the silent generation?

In the U.S., the acceleration of suburbanization and highway development has been driven partly by the requirements of the Baby Boomers, a generation born between 1946 and 1964. Practitioners and scholars believe that the Baby Boomers’ travel patterns are dramatically different from those of previous cohorts, due to their heavy reliance on motor vehicles. However, this argument might mask a socioeconomic heterogeneity among this generation; and changing social and technological environments, such as delayed retirement and the increasing popularity of communication technology, might have reshaped this generation’s travel patterns. Using the 2001 and 2017 U.S. National Household Travel Surveys (NHTSs), this study examines how vehicle travel by people aged 56–71 (the Baby Boomers) in 2017 differs from that of the same age group (referred to as the Silent Generation) in 2001. Descriptive analysis shows that the overall distance traveled in vehicles by this age group slightly increased between 2001 and 2017. However, travel frequency declined. Regression results show that, all else being equal, Baby Boomers in 2017 had lower VMT and took fewer vehicle trips than the Silent Generation in 2001. These results also show how the relationship between socioeconomic attributes, the built environment and vehicle travel differs between the two generations. For example, results show that gender and racial disparities in vehicle travel are narrower among the Baby Boomers than they were among the Silent Generation, while retirement and having a college degree have a stronger relationship with vehicle travel among Boomers. Results show the necessity of factoring in such sociodemographic diversity, along with the impact of population aging as a whole on demand for vehicle travel, when devising future transportation policy.