ACS Data Users Group

Hi,

i was looking to see if any on ehad recommendation of what varaibles i can start looking at to calculate 2 measures

a) Rent Burden

b) Utility Burden

whati am trying to achieve is estimnate economic hardships

any suggestions would be greatly helpful

Look at

ACS published a story of how the Department of Energy created the LEAD Tool to discover and alleviate areas under energy burden. They used the following ACS variables to highlight energy burden: tenure, year structure built, units in structure, house heating fuel, household size, household income

https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/about/acs-data-stories/lead-tool.html

I hope this helps!

Hi Natasha,

I agree with David, you should consider using the Microdata (PUMS) for this. The variable's name is "GRPIP".
You can also try another approach -- please refer to my other post here:

https://acsdatacommunity.prb.org/discussion-forum/f/forum/1401/need-help-to-recreate-a-chart-from-harvard-university-on-cost-burdened-ratio/3780#3780

Hope this helps!

-QT

Another comment -- if you look back a couple of pages you will find my post on a Small Area Estimation computer program that I wrote. It is still a "work in progress" I'm still working on and testing the replicate weight code. The current github version gets synthetic microdata for census tracts starting with PUMS data and "B" "S" or "DP" tables at the tract level. Once you have the synthetic tract level data you can create tables for any of the PUMS PUMA variables. You can aggregate the tract data to get tables for counties, cities/towns (places county subdivisions).

Dave

Thank you