Adam Davidson
Like a lot of carless New Yorkers, I am generally confused by bursts of populist outrage over high gas prices. But I have always assumed that the anger is genuine — that hard-working Americans, who already spend a lot on gas, are thrown into turmoil when they have to spend even more. After all, 63 percent of Americans insist that these price increases have caused them some financial hardship.
But amid the recent mania over prices hitting $4 a gallon, I decided to figure out whether this fury is economically rational. So I took a look at data from the Census Bureau, which conducts a quarterly survey of American spending habits. During these last few years of historically high oil prices, Americans spent about $40 a week, or $2,000 a year, on gas. That’s around 5 percent of our overall spending. It’s less than half of what we spend on restaurants and entertainment.
High gas prices must be forcing Americans to cut back in other ways, right? That’s what the economists Lutz Kilian at the University of Michigan and Paul Edelstein of the consulting firm IHS Global Insight wondered. They looked at personal spending habits during periods of high energy prices and discovered that “somewhat surprisingly, there is no significant decline in total expenditures on recreation,” which was one place they expected to find frugality. More specifically, rising gas prices had “no significant effect on the consumption of movies, bowling and billiard[s], casino gambling and only insignificant declines for recreational camps, sightseeing, spectator sports and spectator amusements.” Some people bought fewer lottery tickets, they told me.
In other words, Americans may protest loudly, but their economic behavior indicates a remarkable indifference to the price of oil.
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