Household Impacts of Gasoline Decontrol

摘要

The Phase I CHRD System was used to estimate the direct impact on household gasoline expenditures of the gasoline price decontrol proposal. Decontrol was evaluated under two assumptions, a uniform 3 cents per gallon price increase at the pump in 1979 and a higher, 10 cents per gallon increase in 1979. Decontrol is estimated to increase average gasoline expenditures for households owning one or more cars from $724 under the current regulation (BAU) scenario for 1979 to $789 under the 10 cents decontrol scenario. This increase amounts to a change of 0.5 in the percent of disposable income spent on gasoline. These impacts are examined for a variety of population subgroups in the body of this report and the estimated impact varies substantially. In absolute dollar terms, the impact is obviously greatest on those who drive a lot, with workers commuting more than 15,000 miles annually estimated to spent $114 more on gasoline under the 10 cents decontrol scenario. Higher income families drive more on average than low income families, and, hence, have larger dollar increases from decontrol, but the impact as measured by the percent of disposable income spent on gasoline is higher for lower income families where an additional 0.8 of a percent of their disposable income is devoted to gasoline, compared to an additional 0.3 of a percent for families with incomes over $20,000. (ERA citation 09:009980)