Do high gas prices improve the lives of children?

I am not being totally sarcastic here.  I don’t know if high fuel prices were the intended consequences of George Bushs’ policies but completely destabilizing the middle east has certainly led to higher prices, and these higher prices may be leading to some things that are in fact good.  At the New york Times reports today

In March, Americans drove 11 billion fewer miles on public roads than in the same month the previous year, a 4.3 percent decrease — the sharpest one-month drop since the Federal Highway Administration began keeping records in 1942.

Less driving is a good thing in that cars are a major source of pollution, high gas prices may also lead to less sprawal.

To Denver’s mayor, John W. Hickenlooper, $4 gasoline offers a useful incentive for such plans.

“It can be an accelerator,” he said during an interview inside the imposing column-fronted City Hall. “It’s not going to be the dagger in the heart of suburban sprawl, but there’s a certain inclination, a certain momentum back toward downtown.”

The article also talks to a few people who live in the exurbs:

Juanita Johnson and her husband, both retired Denver schoolteachers, moved here last August, after three decades in the city and a few years in the mountains. They bought a four-bedroom house for $415,000.

Last winter, they spent $3,000 on propane for heat, she said. Suddenly, this seemed like a place to flee. “We’d sell if we could, but we’d lose our shirt,” Ms. Johnson said. Recently she counted 15 sale signs. One home nearby is listed below $400,000.

“I was so glad to get out of the city, the pollution the traffic, the crime,” she said. Now, the suburbs seem mean. “I wouldn’t do this again.”

My first house was in an a suburban area and the meanness factor as well as the lonliness factor are hard to explain until you have lived in a outlying suburb. I used to take my dog for walks in some of the nearby parks and outside of a few teeneagers drinking beer and smoking, I never saw people in these parks. I live in an urban area now and whenever I take my dog for a walk I run into other dog owners, see people playing frisbee in the park, kids playing soccer, tennis and basketball. For whatever reason people don’t leave their house in the suburbs, like this person:

Megan Werner, 39, a mother of three, moved here five years ago from a dense suburb closer to Denver. She and her husband bought a home set on a 1.5-acre lot in the Deer Creek Farm subdivision. The space justified her husband’s 40-minute commute.

“We wanted more than a postage stamp,” she said, as her 5-year-old daughter walked barefoot across the driveway.

It used to cost her about $30 to fill her Honda minivan with gas. Now, it is more like $50, and she coordinates her trips — shopping in town, combined with dance lessons for her children. But she has no thoughts of leaving.

“I can open up my door and my kids can play,” Ms. Werner said.

Ms Werners children while they have their own space to play, are missing out on a father as I doubt after a full day of work an 40 minute commute each way dad is real interested in the kids, and missing out on most other social interactions as they go through life in the self contained world of Ms Werner. In a few years maybe her 5 year-old will start going to the otherwise unused public spaces where she can drink beer and smoke cigarettes with her friends.   The dance lessons may pay-off for the daughter as later maybe she can get a job as a stripper. 

Maybe High fuel prices will keep other parents from making the mistakes of some misguided exurban parents and their kids will be better off for it.