Supermarket PCW and PSUs

Project PCW Notes
December 17, 2018

Gravitec Development is undertaking a major exploration of supermarket per-capita expenditures.  This email is another set of notes that discuss our findings.

Last week we examined Supermarket PCW and way it is influenced by region of the country, and by urban versus rural settings.  We saw that the highest PCW was in the Northeast, and rural PCW was higher than urban PCW.

But we can examine the geography even more closely.  For the first time, Gravitec Development can look at the Supermarket PCWs for individual major metropolitan areas.  The detailed spending records of the BLS Diary Study now contain notations for “S” sized Primary Sampling Units, or PSUs.  Approximately 40% of the households sampled lived in one of these PSUs.

The table below shows the average Supermarket PCW for each of these PSU areas.  Not too surprisingly, Alaska had the highest PCW at $62.35.  The lowest was the Houston area with $37.07.  When controlled for differences in household size and income, Alaska still had the highest PCW, but Atlanta had the lowest.

Here are the results for all 23 PSU areas:

PSU HH Size Income PCW
S11A/Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH 2.237 $92,218 57.042
S12A/New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA 2.568 $81,541 46.408
S12B/Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington,PA-NJ-DE-MD 2.525 $93,777 56.566
S23A/Chicago-Naperville-Elgin,IL-IN-WI 2.522 $62,523 51.608
S23B/Detroit-Warren-Dearborn,MI 2.397 $76,471 47.126
S24A/Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington,MN-WI 2.286 $79,361 52.216
S24B/St. Louis,MO-IL 2.382 $67,990 43.439
S35A/Washington-Arlington-Alexandria,DC-VA-MD-WV 2.344 $120,290 56.057
S35B/Miami-Ft. Lauderdale-West Palm Beach,FL 2.746 $88,454 44.857
S35C/Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell,GA 2.603 $90,921 39.069
S35D/Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater,FL 2.000 $49,371 48.381
S35E/Baltimore-Columbia-Towson,MD 2.405 $115,995 49.803
S37A/Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington,TX 2.443 $82,510 40.249
S37B/Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land,TX 2.892 $92,419 37.069
S48A/Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale,AZ 2.403 $58,404 42.324
S48B/Denver-Aurora-Lakewood,CO 2.557 $84,868 51.313
S49A/Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim,CA 2.676 $80,452 42.720
S49B/San Fransico-Oakland-Haywood,CA 2.400 $115,808 52.888
S49C/Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario,CA 2.719 $52,304 40.288
S49D/Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue,WA 2.686 $106,116 60.789
S49E/San Diego-Carlsbad,CA 2.712 $88,635 53.532
S49F/Honolulu,HI 2.885 $79,414 45.545
S49G/Anchorage,AK 2.516 $92,837 62.354