New flash: We spend a lot on gas

No surprise, Texans are more vulnerable to gas price increases than people in most other states.

While most Americans felt the pinch of higher gasoline prices in 2008, drivers in Texas paid an especially heavy toll, according to a national study released Tuesday.

Texans on average spent 6.8 percent of their household income, or $2,622, on gasoline last year, the seventh-highest percentage of any state, said the study by the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group in Washington.

Yet Texas ranked near the bottom, at 37, in taking steps that could help reduce the state’s dependence on oil, like boosting public transit options or providing incentives to buy fuel-efficient hybrid cars.

The report highlights both the burden record oil prices last year had on U.S. consumers and what states are doing to make their citizens less vulnerable to such spikes.

The report gives us one more good reason to be thankful for the existence of Mississippi, whose residents spend over nine percent of their income at the pump, thus making us look not so bad by comparison. You can see an overview of the report here and the full report itself here.

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One Response to New flash: We spend a lot on gas

  1. Linkmeister says:

    But you have (relatively) lots of oil and refineries! How in hell can Hawai’i, which has none of either, be better off than you?

    Okay, we might have higher per capita income, since we don’t have all those border counties which are desperately poor, but still.

    Does not compute.

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