Economic access

Layer type(s): Resource Access Opportunities goal layer

Data description(s)
1. US Energy Information Administration (EIA) data on gasoline prices by county (Price data from the State Energy Data System (SEDS): 1960-2017 (complete)).

  1. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data on wages. Specifically, “Statewide Average Annual Pay All establishment sizes Total Covered Total”. BLS dataseries IDS: ENU0900050010, ENU2300050010, ENU2500050010, ENU3300050010, ENU3600050010, ENU4400050010. This data was accessed from R using the R package blscrapeR for years 2001 to 2017.

Methods summary
We calculated the ratio of gas prices to median wages for each state in the region. The target for this layer is to maintain a constant ratio each year. When no change, or a negative change indicating increased economic access occurs, this results in a perfect score. If the ratio doubles, the region scores 0.

Median wages
Median annual wages were provided at the state level by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. No additional processing was needed.

Gas Prices
Data on gas prices was converted from $/MMBtu (Millions of British thermal units), to approximate dollars per gallon using the heat contents provided by the EIA to get prices in US Dollars per gallon for each state.

Calculate ratio
Mean dollars per gallon was divided by mean wages for each region and year, and the change in that ratio year over year was calculated.

Resource Access Opportunities layer
The target for this layer is to keep the ratio constant year over year. If the change remains the same (no change) or becomes negative, indicating a drop in the ratio, a region receives a score of 100. A score of 0 is assigned to a region if they experience a doubling in the ratio, as this would quickly and dramatically reduce economic access by half.

Gapfilling
There was no gapfilling

References
U.S. Energy Information Administration (Oct 2008). Gasoline and Diesel Fuel Update. https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/gasdiesel/

Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, Statewide Average Annual Pay All establishment sizes Total Covered Total.