Why Prices at the Pump May Have Little Bite

As the summer driving season approaches, gas prices have been soaring

These data point to the enormous resilience of the consumer. But they also bring into focus a truism lost in the miasma of media coverage and political rhetoric surrounding energy: while the price of gasoline may be highly visible and symbolic, filling up the tank simply doesn’t eat up that much of most families’ budgets.

How much will Americans spend this year to satisfy their gasoline habit? It’s hard to know precisely. But there are clues in government data. In the Consumer Price Index, the inflation gauge, gasoline has a weighting of 4.15 percent, according to Patrick Jackman, an economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In other words, about four pennies of every American’s consumer dollar wind up in the gas tank. (The weighting is revised every two years.)

NY Times