In a previous

CD post,

I wrote about the relative affordability of today's $3 gasoline, measured as share of disposable income. After the Federal Reserve released data today on third quarter household net worth ($528,000 per household), I thought it would be interesting to look at the cost of gasoline as share of per- capita household net worth.

Using data on

household net worth

from the Federal Reserve, historical

gasoline price data

from the EIA , and population data from

Economagic

, the graph above show the historical series of 1,000 gallons of gasoline purchased at the average retail price in a given year, as a share of per- capita "household new worth" in that year.



In 1949, the retail price of gas was only 27 cents, but it took 4.2% of per- capita new worth to purchase 1,000 gallons of gas, making gasoline almost three times as expensive then compared to today, when it only takes 1.44% of per- capita net worth to buy 1,000 gallons of gas at $3.

To be as expensive as gas in 1981, measured as the cost per 1,000 gallons as a share of per- capita net worth, gasoline today would have to sell for about $6.50 per gallon.