No cash rent in ACS 2010 (5 yrs)

USA
1

Hi,

I am working with home-related costs from the ACS 2010 (5 yrs) sample. I am having some difficulties understanding the behavior of the “No cash rent” category. Census Fact Finder tells me that roughly 5.5% of the sample should be in this category nationally (Table B25063 for ACS 2010 5 years). However, my analysis of the ACS 2010 (5 yrs) does not confirm this.

In details, I am not sure I am understanding the coding of the variables. In the RENT variable help, I read the following code:

RENT Specific Variable Codes
[…]
0001 = No cash rent (1980-1990, ACS, PRCS)
[…]

which I interpret as the fact that no cash rents should be coded with a ‘0001’ in the csv file I downloaded. However, there is no RENT = ‘0001’ in the entire file (not even RENT = ‘1’). Therefore, I use the OWNERSHPD to study the category. The code book of the data I downloaded tells me this variable is coded as ‘21’ when the household has a no cash rent. However, when I calculate the proportion of no cash rents in the sample (both with weighted with HHWT and unweighted) I get that no cash renters are roughly 1.6% of the total. Moreover, whenever OWENRSHPD = ‘21’, RENT = ‘0’ – contradicting my interpretation of the RENT coding scheme.

I am wondering where my interpretation of the RENT or OWNERSHPD variables is wrong and what may cause the inconsistency with the Census table.

Thanks in advance for any suggestion.

2

I had a mistake in the calculation of the no cash rent proportion from the sample. The proportion as calculated from the 2010 ACS microdata sample is consistent with the table on FactFinder. I would still be curious to know how no cash renters are coded in the RENT variable of this sample if possible.

3

You are right that you should use OWNERSHIPD to identify those with no cash rent. These are coded as 0 in RENT, along with owners and those in group quarters. Sorry for the confusion, we will update the codebook in the next data release.