US Percent of Income Spent on Gas Map | Hacker News Reader

US Percent of Income Spent on Gas Map

nytimes.com

32 pointsdangoldin11 comments

somewhat silly map. If you go to the income tab, then there are almost no differences in median percent of income spent on gas vs. median income. Even gas prices are correlated with median income (maybe the oil companies do have a heart and having the higher income regions "subsidize" the lower income regions... actually it probably has a lot to do with gas taxes).

That being said, I was a bit shocked that some median people pay 15% of their income in gas. yikes!

Come to think of it, I bet they just divided the median spent on gas with the median income instead of actually finding the median of % income spent on gas (e.g. maybe lower income people drive less than higher income people so the median will be lower).

I don't think that's correct. I believe the first map is percent of total income in the county spent on gas. There's no median involved in that one.

Living in NM, the rural areas are really poor (Income ~25% less than urban), mostly agriculture (big trucks), and long distances to travel to get to gas stations. Combine that with all the young kids moving away (free lottery scholarships) and a higher than normal percentage of people on fixed income, and I'm only surprised the gas doesn't eat up more of their income.

Remarkable how well it lines up with counties that voted for Bush.

http://www.amconmag.com/2008/2008_02_11/article.html

Cheap real estate (which usually equates to lots of driving) is a very strong predictor of votes for Bush.

I was just thinking how remarkable it was that where gas prices mattered less, votes lined up for Kerry.

Interesting that those that see high gas prices as a natural way towards a higher-evolved energy system are those who have the least skin in the game.

Not especially. It's mostly just an urban-rural thing.

Why wasn't there any mention of traveling distance in the article or map? While it would make sense that the rural areas earn less, and therefor spend a higher percentage on the relatively constant gas prices, shouldn't it also be considered that those in rural areas must drive farther to reach their destinations, and across unimproved roads at times?

In the more populated areas, we may only drive 10 - 50 minutes to our destination, and most of that might be in traffic (at least here in southern California). Of course we wouldn't need to spend as much in gas. Everything's closer.

I bet there's pretty close to an inverse relationship between the percentage spent for gas, and the percentage spent for housing, especially when you normalize for income. Would be interesting to see some mashups of this type of data.

Is that a map of population density I see?

You could also call it US Percenf of Income Spent on Destroying the World.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com