Tuesday, October 15, 2019

Transportation Costs in Metros and States

Nationally, the average household devotes 16 percent of its expenditures to transportation (vehicle purchases, finance charges, insurance, repairs, gasoline, public transportation, etc.). But in the Detroit metropolitan area, residents spend a larger 19 percent of their budget on transportation. Just as housing costs vary across the country, so do transportation expenses. Here is transportation's share of average household spending in selected metropolitan areas...

Transportation as a share of average household spending, 2017–18
Detroit: 19.3%
Phoenix: 19.0%
Dallas: 16.8%
Miami: 16.3%
Houston: 15.9%
Baltimore: 15.8%
Chicago: 13.2%
Boston: 12.0%
New York: 12.0%
San Francisco: 11.3%

According to a Bureau of Labor Statistics' analysis of the first state-level spending data ever teased from the Consumer Expenditure Survey, the average Texas household devotes 20 percent of its budget to transportation. This is significantly greater than the 16 to 17 percent of the budget devoted to transportation by households in the metro areas of Dallas and Houston. Transportation consumed 15 percent of the average household's budget in California and 14 percent in New York state, higher than the share devoted to transportation by households in San Francisco (11 percent) or the New York metro (12 percent).

Source: Demo Memo analysis of the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Expenditure Survey

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