I am trying to use the IPUMS USA Data Analysis System to create a table displaying the number of housing units available at or below specific rent levels. I am interested in looking at this data for different pumas in Virginia, for example puma 04101, and would like to be able to display this by number of bedrooms if possible (i.e. number of 2 bedroom housing units with rent at or below $557). When I have tried to do this before the results seem very off (numbers are way too high). Thank You!
Since you are interested in a household-level characteristic (i.e. cost of Rent for the household by number of bedrooms) you will need to make sure to limit the analysis to households. To do this, select a single person from each household by typing “pernum(1)” in the “Selection Filter(s):” box. You will also want to be sure to change the weight to hhwt in order to generate household-level estimates.
Next, you will want to account for the universe of the variable you are interested in. The RENT variable excludes group quarters and owner occupied dwellings. You should also look at the codes for the variable. RENT uses a code of 0 to represent households that were outside of the questions universe and 1 (in recent samples) to represent “no cash rent.” This means, to get an accurate count of how many households have rent lower then $557, you would add “rent(2-557)” (or “rent(1-556)” if you want to include households with no cash rent) to the “Selection Filter(s):” box.
I hope this helps.