Sunday, November 18, 2007

OPIS: NJ Wins - Alabama Loses the Fuel Cost War

The just released Oil Price Information Service (OPIS) Pain at the Pump study compares current gas prices, estimated vehicles miles traveled as reported by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, and estimated median income as published by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Wilcox County, Alabama residents spend the highest proportion of their income on gas, an average household there spent 12.7% of income to fuel a single family vehicle. A number of Kentucky and Mississippi counties were also high on the list averaging more the 11% of the household income.

In contrast New Jersey held a near monopoly on the counties with the lowest fuel cost burden, Hunterdon, Morris and Somerset counties spending less than 2% of their income on fueling one vehicle. The combination of near zero gasoline taxes and high NY area incomes continue to offer immunity from the rising gasoline prices.

2 comments:

Nick Wright said...

Poor Alabamans. So little money, so great a love of big, old American trucks.

Anonymous said...

Yeah and those 3 NJ counties are some of the richest in the nation and our gas tax is still way to low.