How to get to ACS GRAPI and SMOCAPI

In the ACS data tables there are variables for the percentage of household income spent on housing - GRAPI for renters and SMOCAPI for owners (Explore Census Data cost). I can’t find something like that in IPUMS. Am I missing it, or do I need to do a recode to create it? If the latter, should I be using OWNCOST and RENTGRS combined with INCTOT, or different variables? Thanks!

Summary tables from the ACS are released by IPUMS on our spatial project website IPUMS NHGIS. We recommend new users familiarize themselves with the website by reviewing the detailed FAQ page as well as the short video tutorials on our user guide. These tables can be found in the data finder tool by using the topics filter and selecting “Housing Value and Costs - Rent and Renter Costs”.

You can also obtain housing cost statistics using the person-level ACS microdata on IPUMS USA. While there is no separate variable that reports these values in IPUMS USA, users can construct these measures using OWNERSHP to differentiate between renters and homeowners and the variables RENT/RENTGRS, MORTAMT1/MORTAMT2, and HHINCOME to calculate the percentage of household income spent on housing. Note that the rent and mortgage values are monthly costs, while HHINCOME reports annual income.

It’s possible to create and analyze this type of variable in our online analysis tool without downloading a microdata extract. After selecting a sample in the linked page, navigate to the Create Variables button on the top left to enter the variable creation tool. The Compute tab allows users to write their own syntax to compute a new variable. Below is the syntax to create such a housing cost ratio variable.

 if (OWNERSHP eq 1)
 Housing_Cost_Ratio = (MORTAMT1*12)/HHINCOME
 else if (OWNERSHP eq 2)
 Housing_Cost_Ratio = (RENT*12)/HHINCOME