Trends in Public Spending on Transportation and Water Infrastructure, 1956 to 2004

摘要

The nation's infrastructure plays a vital role in its economy and in the daily lives of its citizens. Since the mid-1950s, expenditures for transportation and water infrastructure by the federal government and state and local governments have annually accounted for over 2 percent of the nations gross domestic product (GDP). In 2004, such spending for infrastructure was more than $312 billion (measured in 2006 dollars). This Congressional Budget Office (CBO) paper describes the trends in public spending for transportation and water infrastructure since 1956. CBO focuses on spending for highways and roads, mass transit, rail, aviation, water transportation, water resources such as the construction and maintenance of dams and levees, and water supply and wastewater treatment. Those types of infrastructure, which draw heavily on federal resources, share the economic characteristics of being relatively capital intensive and producing services under public management that facilitate private economic activity. They are typically the types examined by studies that attempt to calculate the payoff, in terms of benefits to the economy, from government funding of infrastructure.