Property Insurance Reporting

USA
1

I am looking at the reporting of property insurance costs (propinsr) for owner occupied households in the annual ACS from 2001 to present. There is a notable jump in households coded as 1 (which I interpret as not having property insurance) between the 2007 and 2008 ACS. The survey question does not seem to be posed differently between years. This is true for both households that report having a mortgage and not. I understand that that rate may have increased during that period but it remains elevated through the present. (Also the American Housing Survey which has a direct question about whether the household buys property insurance, does not show a similar jump.)

I am trying to understand if there is something that has changed in the data between those years. The editing procedures say that there were changes in allocation of this variable between 2007 and 2008, but even if I look at unallocated responses only, I still see this jump. (Also prior to 2008 if you look unallocated responses for those who reported having a mortgage, everyone reports property insurance, which is what I would expect.)

2

This jump that you are seeing in property owners reporting no property insurance costs (PROPINSR = 1) in 2008 is also present in the original PUMS data released by the Census Bureau. It appears to be due to a change in how the Census Bureau allocated property insurance costs for respondents with OWNERSHPD = 13 (“Owned with mortgage or loan”) who reported no costs or left the question blank. In 2007, every household with this pattern was either allocated a value for property insurance costs or was eventually assigned a value of $0. This appears to correspond to the following editing rule (in force from 2003-2007) from the editing procedure tab for PROPINSR:

If the reported insurance payment (PROPINSR) for an owner-occupied unit (OWNERSHP) is 0 or blank, it will be allocated. The allocated value is the PROPINSR value from another unit with the same ownership status (OWNERSHP), the same type of building (UNITSSTR), similar value (VALUEH), and in the same geographic unit (it is not specified what level of geography is used).

However, this editing rule seems to not have been applied in 2008 when 30,443 respondent households with this pattern (OWNERSHPD = 13 and none/blank reported property insurance costs) were not reallocated a value for their property insurance costs (see the screenshot below from our online analysis tool). These households account for about 70% of the increase in owner-occupied households reporting no property insurance costs between the two years. While rules for allocating missing values for PROPINSR exist in the 2008-onwards ACS samples, they all include additional stipulations regarding the values for other variables. Moreover, the editing procedure refers to allocating cases where PROPINSR is missing, but there are no procedures noted for reallocating responses of $0/none.

Most of the remaining change appears to be caused by an increase in the number of household respondents with OWNERSHPD = 12 (“Owned free and clear”) who reported a value for property insurance costs, but were reassigned to a value of $0. Two of the editing rules introduced in 2008 strike me as potential culprits behind this edit:

  • For an owner-occupied unit (OWNERSHP), if the property insurance (PROPINSR) is more than 2% of reported property value (VALUEH), PROPINSR will be replaced with a missing value.
  • For an owner-occupied unit (OWNERSHP), if property value (VALUEH) is reported and property insurance (PROPINSR) is missing, PROPINSR will be allocated.

For more information, I recommend sending your question to the experts at Census (census.askdata@census.gov) or posting it on the ACS data users discussion forum. We would be happy to update our documentation if you learn anything more about this!

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3

Thank you Ivan for that detailed reply. I will see if I can get more clarity from the Census.

I think I was confused by the edit procedure because it said allocations are based on OWNERSHP which doesn’t distinguish whether the dwelling has a mortgage or not rather than OWNERSHPD . It seems like there was also a change in allocation in 2011 that is not captured in the edit procedure. Perhaps they stopped overwriting insurance > 2% of home value in 2011. I included an expanded version of your table. hasins=0 is propinsr=1 and hasins=1 is propinsr>1

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4

I’m glad to hear that my response helped clarify some things! Your theory that Census stopped reallocating insurance values > 2% of home value in 2011 seems possible to me. We would be happy to update our documentation if you find that this is the case.

5

I wrote to the Census, but their response did not address all the discrepancies that I am seeing in the data.

Here is their response:
Hello Daniel,

Thank you for your inquiry and using ACS data!

I reached out to our subject matter experts on the housing data.

They have provided the information below about the changes to homeowner and insurance data that have been made since 2011:

2011 - for those without a mortgage, we allowed insurance amount to be included in the hot deck, if reported as ‘none’.

2011 - For those with a mortgage, we didn’t allow a ‘none’ amount to be included in the hot deck.

2011, we didn’t allow a property value of zero - those were allocated.

2014 - the maximum $ amount for value for the hot deck was capped at $9,000,000

2015 - for those with low home values ($1-$999), we multiplied by $1000. And if insurance was >.2% of the value, we imputed. Also, there were spec/programming updates on this edit when inconsistencies were found.

2023 - the insurance cap was raised to 6% of the value. Higher amounts were blanked and allocated.

On the propins value question ($4), values of 1-7 are set to $4.

Daniel, they wrote that you will have to refer to IPUMS documentation for any further explanations.

6

Thank you for sharing this additional information that the Census Bureau provided to you.

It appears to me that the 2011 rule that “for those with a mortgage, we didn’t allow a ‘none’ amount to be included in the hot deck” is driving the change that you’re seeing in 2011. Specifically, households with a mortgage who skipped the question or reported no property insurance could previously be allocated to not having any property insurance (i.e., PROPINS = 1 & QPROPINS = 4) if a ‘none’ amount was selected from their hot deck (see this guide on different allocation methods). The rule change removed the ‘none’ option from their hot deck, making it necessary for them to be allocated some positive amount of property insurance. In other words, the 12,742 cases in 2010 from your screenshot that were allocated to having no property insurance could no longer be allocated to this option in 2011 and instead were allocated to some value of PROPINS > 1.