New article Subsidizing car ownership for low-income individuals and households - Open Access (!) in @JPER7. The article draws on interviews with individuals who received subsidized automobiles from @Vehicles4Change.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456X20950428
1/n

tl;dr Subsidize cars for poor folks. Cars help them get around, find better jobs, and access all sorts of activities. Most would have bought a car on their own but safe purchasing options means they can avoid the trappings of the used car market. 2/n

Having a car made interviewees’ daily travel so much easier and opened up job opportunities that were previously inaccessible. 3/n

The benefits are more than travel and access to jobs – a car meant being able to move to a different neighborhood, access to grocery stores, healthcare, and children’s participation in school and other activities. 4/n

Some readers may worry that subsidizing car access increases unsustainable car travel and imposes financial burdens. I'm less certain. These worries rest on assumptions about what recipients would do in the absence of programs like @vehicle4change. 5/n

Like most Americans, most interviewees owned cars before obtaining one from VFC and would have obtained one without VFC (though it would have taken longer). The effect of subsidizing cars on net CO2 is not clear. 6/n

But the used car market is awful. Some interviewees were in and out of car ownership many times. One interviewee went through 7 cars in the 11 years before getting a car from VFC. 7/n

Most interviewees were already taking risky bets buying used cars - cars that were often unreliable and more expensive than the subsidized ones. Getting a car via @Vehicles4Change provides a safe way to obtain a reliable car. 8/n

Finally - if you’d like, I’d happily give a remote talk in your class about this research. 9/n