Vehicle MPG by Income Level

This is kind of a random piece of data but I found it interesting.  

I got the numbers below out of a report titled Household Income and Vehicle Fuel Economy in California  That report is specific to California but its probably similar to national figures.    Its quite likely that trends differ some based on region but probably not by a lot.

Here is the table :

	gal/day	mi /day	MPG
$0 to $25k	0.9	20.7	23.9
$25k to $35k	1	24.1	24.6
$35k to $50k	1.2	29	24.8
$50k to 100k	1.5	36.7	25.6
over $100k	1.9	47.2	27
all incomes	1.3	31.7	25.2

People with higher incomes have more fuel efficient cars.   I'm going to hazard a guess that this is in large part because people with higher incomes generally drive newer cars and newer cars have gradually better MPG ratings.

People with higher incomes also drive more in general.   I assume this is a combination of factors.   A lot of lower income households are people who don't work or are retirees and thus have less need to drive.   And of course the cost of gasoline keeps lower income people from driving as much.

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