Hello. I seek data for the cost of utilities (housing). Ideas? Thank you!
Hi Gwendolyn -
You might look into Regional Price Parities (RPPs) from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).Regional Price Parities, Real Personal Consumption Expenditures, and Real Personal Income |…
If you can use PUMS data, they have cost of utilities.
Thank you, Douglas. I was able to download some PUMS data tables. Now if I could simply figure out how to decipher them. I really only want to know if the cost of utilities has increased in New Mexico over the past several years.
Apparently the ACS has some new (2021 5 year data) tables with various monthly household costs
B25132-B25135
https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/technical-documentation/table-and-geography-changes/2021/5-year.html
the data is in dollars and it is "binned" into categories. If you want a percent of household income or percent of household expenses you can't divide using this data. The ratio of averages is not the average of the ratios.
If you want to do things for a PUMA then you can use the PUMS data to do the division on individual records. PUMS codebook: https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/tech_docs/pums/data_dict/PUMS_Data_Dictionary_2021.pdf ELEP electricity cost (monthly) GASP gas cost (monthly) FULP fuel cost (other than gas or electric). ELEFP (is fuel included in condo cost etc) Don't forget the inflation adjustment factor ADJHSE and there are others (income, total housing costs HFL heating fuel, etc. There are many variables associated with housing costs.
Dave