研究 A Year of Low Gas Prices: 的 Consumer Response in 15 Metro Areas

In our recent report, 的 Consumer Response to a Year of Low Gas Prices, we quantified the impact of lower gas prices in 2015 on consumer spending across the nation. We observed that the drop in gas spending as a fraction of income varied geographically – with the largest drops in gas spending experienced in areas in the South and Midwest. In this brief, using the JP摩根 追逐 研究所’s Local Consumer Commerce data, we explore the impact of lower gas prices in 2015 on consumer spending in 15 major metro areas – Atlanta, 芝加哥, 哥伦布, 达拉斯, 丹佛, 底特律, 休斯顿, 洛杉矶, 迈阿密, 纽约, 凤凰城, Portland (OR), 圣地亚哥, San Francisco, 和西雅图. We found that the two cities with the largest decelerations in non-gas spending–休斯顿 and 达拉斯–are two of the three cities most exposed to the oil and gas industry.

的 consumer response to lower gas prices might have differed across these metro areas for a number of reasons. 第一个, the drop in gas prices in 2015 was much more tempered in California than in other parts of the country. Second, people in some cities spent a higher fraction of their income on gas than in others. As a result of these two factors, the drop in fuel spending between 2014 and 2015 was the equivalent of a 1.3 percent increase in annual income in 达拉斯 compared to just a 0.3 percent increase in income in 洛杉矶 (Figure 1). Nine of the 15 cities were highly impacted by lower gas prices in that the drop in gas spending represented 0.9 percent or more of annual income. In the other six cities, the drop in gas spending represented at most 0.5 percent of annual income.