Gasoline Intensity of the US Economy at Recent Low (Take Two)

Thanks much to David Appell in the comments, who motivated me to take a second look at this analysis. I had been using a subset of total gasoline consumption in an earlier analysis, and he correctly points out that a more comprehensive measure is better. So this post has subsequently been revised.

Today the US EIA announced that projected household gasoline consumption in 2015 is expected to be the lowest in 11 years. That motivated me to update a graph I did a few years ago on the gasoline intensity of the US economy, defined as the total expenditures at the pump by US consumers as a proportion of overall GDP. (Note: I use annual values here and ignore higher frequency variations.)

That graph is shown above for the period 1976-2015, and shows gasoline as a percentage of overall GDP. The data comes from the US EIA (gasoline product supplied and prices) and the White House (GDP). Data for 2015 are obviously projections.

The data shows that as recently as 2011 (and really, much of the past decade) spending on gasoline, as a proportion of GDP, was similar to what it was in the mid-1980s. In 2015 that proportion is expected to be 40% of that in 1980 and more than a third less than what it was in 2010.

The bottom line here is that the gasoline intensity of the US economy is lower, by a long shot, than at any time in recent history. That is good news.