Although the average cost of a new vehicle today is well over $30,000 and the price of gasoline has more than doubled in the past 30 years, Americans spend less on transportation today than they did back when the first George Bush was president.
In 1989, American households averaged 18.9 percent of all expenditures on transportation (vehicle purchases, gasoline, other related expenses). But last year, transportation expenses had fallen to 15.8 percent of all personal expenditures, say researchers at the University of Michigan.
Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Expenditures Survey, Michael Sivak and Brandon Schoettle of
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