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Comparing the 2019 American Housing Survey to Contemporary Sources of Property Tax Records: Implications for Survey Efficiency and Quality

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June 2022

Written by: John Voorheis, Ariel J. Binder, Emily Molfino

Working Paper Number:

CES-22-22

Abstract

Given rising nonresponse rates and concerns about respondent burden, government statistical agencies have been exploring ways to supplement household survey data collection with administrative records and other sources of third-party data. This paper evaluates the potential of property tax assessment records to improve housing surveys by comparing these records to responses from the 2019 American Housing Survey. Leveraging the U.S. Census Bureau's linkage infrastructure, we compute the fraction of AHS housing units that could be matched to a unique property parcel (coverage rate), as well as the extent to which survey and property tax data contain the same information (agreement rate). We analyze heterogeneity in coverage and agreement across states, housing characteristics, and 11 AHS items of interest to housing researchers. Our results suggest that partial replacement of AHS data with property data, targeted toward certain survey items or single-family detached homes, could reduce respondent burden without altering data quality. Further research into partial-replacement designs is needed and should proceed on an item-by-item basis. Our work can guide this research as well as those who wish to conduct independent research with property tax records that is representative of the U.S. housing stock.

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Keywords Keywords are automatically generated using KeyBERT, a powerful and innovative keyword extraction tool that utilizes BERT embeddings to ensure high-quality and contextually relevant keywords.

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data, data census, census data, microdata, survey data, survey, agency, respondent, state, tax, housing, residential, coverage, household surveys, home, datasets, apartment, house, assessing, housing survey

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Center for Economic Studies, Decennial Census, Housing and Urban Development, Department of Housing and Urban Development, American Housing Survey, Master Address File, Census Bureau Disclosure Review Board, Disclosure Review Board, MAFID, Population Estimates Program

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