Report: Five Percent Of Your Paycheck Goes Toward Gasoline

• Scott Detrow
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  Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.
  
  Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.
  
  Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

About five percent of the average Pennsylvania resident’s paycheck goes toward fuel costs. That’s one of the lowest totals in the United States, according to a new national study. In fact, just nine states had lower percentages.
Connecticut comes in last – or first, depending on how you look at it – at 3.51 percent. Mississippi residents pay the most, with an 8.98 percent average.
FuelFix has more information on the study, conducted by David Gardiner and Associates. (For a look at why Pennsylvania’s gas prices are so low, despite relatively high state taxes, click here.)
More from the FuelFix report:

“Our study paints a picture of two Americas, with drivers in some states paying twice as much as a percentage of their income for gasoline as drivers in other states,” said Peter Lehner, executive director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, which commissioned the analysis. “America as a whole is still addicted to oil. States can actually do a lot on their own to make life better for their citizens.”
Although gasoline spending was pegged to income in each state, the analysis did not pro-rate states’ gasoline price vulnerability based on miles driven. That’s one reason why California, despite scoring tops for promoting alternatives to oil-based transportation, didn’t take top honors for having residents who spend the smallest share of their paychecks at the pump. And it at least partially explains why residents of the Northeast — where public transit systems are robust — are among those paying the least for gasoline.
Dave Grossman, with David Gardiner and Associates, said the study focused on the amount of motor gasoline consumed without looking explicitly at the number of miles driven because that isn’t the only factor driving the amount spent on gasoline per state.

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