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: