Transportation Spending by Low-Income California Households ...

household budget turns out to be virtually identical between California
households and households in the rest of the United States for each
income category—that is, about 7 percent for poor households, about 12
percent for low-income households, and about 16 percent for higherincome
households.
The average annual public transit expenditures for those low-income
households in California that regularly use public transit is lower than
elsewhere in the United States ($451 compared to $487). However, the
result reverses when the average is taken over the entire population of
low-income households ($74 compared to $55). This comes about
because a greater percentage of the low-income households in California
use public transit than elsewhere in the United States (16% compared to
11%). Higher-income households in California use public transit about
as much as higher-income households elsewhere (roughly 8%).
One main reason that Californians have higher transportation
expenditures than those in the rest of the United States is because they
pay more in private vehicle expenditures. For low-income households
with vehicles, the difference in vehicle expenditures between California
and the rest of the United States is roughly $300. Low-income
California households have rates of regular private vehicle use that are
about the same as low-income households elsewhere—roughly 60
percent. For low-income households that purchased a vehicle, purchase
prices for vehicles are slightly lower in California than in the rest of the
United States, but for the higher-income group, California vehicle
purchase prices are slightly higher than elsewhere.
This next section makes use of a separate CES dataset to compare
transportation expenditures in the San Francisco Bay Area to other
metropolitan areas around the country. The Bureau of Labor Statistics
provides a version of the CES data that is aggregated to the level of the
Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), and this MSA-level dataset allows
us to make comparisons across Metropolitan Statistical Areas but does
not allow us to calculate results separately by income group.
Of the 28 Metropolitan Statistical Areas covered by the CES MSAlevel
data, the San Francisco MSA ranks fourth in terms of the dollar
amount spent on transportation annually (Table 3.11). Only
Anchorage, Dallas-Ft. Worth, and Houston have higher transportation
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