Inflation is impacting Americans across the country, but the Boston area has been hit especially hard by rising prices. The Associated Press reports that consumer prices increased over six percent last year, the biggest jump of all metropolitan areas.Overall, inflation rose about 5.5 percent last year. The country has not experienced that kind of year-to-year jump since 1991. One of the major underlying causes for the increase is the price of fuel.
As the price of crude oil spent weeks setting records, those price increases translated into higher prices for gas, food and other goods.
These effects have been compounded in the Boston area because of the region’s distance from the country’s main production centers of food and fuel. A significant amount of the nation’s oil comes from the South and the Midwest, and the Midwest and California are the major agricultural centers.
The more it costs to transport these items and the further they have to go, the more consumers must pay. In addition, many homes in the Boston area are dependant on oil to heat their homes, so an increase in the price of fuel causes home heating bills to rise as well.
--Bridget O'Sullivan
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