How can the American Community Survey (ACS) be used to improve the imputation of Owner-Occupied Rent Expenditures?

There are currently two major agencies, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), that produce estimates of the cost of shelter for renters and for owners on a regular basis. In addition, the Census Bureau is conducting a nation-wide survey, the American Community Survey (ACS) of rents and owner costs on a rolling five-year basis. This paper explores the feasibility of using the public use micro-data of the ACS for a relatively simple imputation of owner-occupied rent expenditures 1 . A larger and more sophisticated effort to obtain owner-occupied rent expenditures using various other sources of housing information is being undertaken at the Census Bureau in collaboration with BLS2 .