Estimating the Number of Low Income Homeowners

I work at Rebuilding Together, a nonprofit which specializes in providing repairs and renovations to low income homeowners. For a while, we've been working with an internal fact sheet which depicts the estimated growth in the number of low income homeowners from 22.9 million in 2008 to 25.8 million in 2010. However, the person who worked out this estimate is no longer working with us and left no instructions or methodology behind how they found this number. They only wrote that they used ACS data based on an average household size of 2.68 people with a combined income below $44,700 as qualifying as low income. Does anyone have an idea of how I could work out the calculation that would yield this estimate? Beyond wanting to figure out if this number has any mathematical validity, we would like a reliable formula to use for making estimates about the change in number of low income households for administrative purposes. 

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  • One more thing to consider...
    Your inquiry was for "low income" home owners, and you mentioned the $44,700 dollar-value threshold. If what you're looking for is the number of households with income below a certain threshold, the table I mentioned (B25118) should work.

    According to HUD, the "low income" threshold in 2008 for a family* of 3 was 44,300 and in 2014 was 46,000. (See: www.huduser.gov/.../FY08_StateIncomeLimits.pdf for 2008 thresholds and www.huduser.gov/.../State_Incomelimits_Report.pdf for 2014 thresholds. The US values are at the bottom of each report.)

    If, instead, you are looking for "low income" defined by ratio of income to poverty level, then you will need to use the ACS microdata. The easiest way to do that is to use the IPUMS system usa.ipums.org/.../index.shtml. You will need a log-in, but it's free. The IPUMS "Analyze Data Online" tool you to query the microdata to create any crosstabulation you might need.

    Feel free to send me a direct message if you want to discuss this further.
    Good luck!

    *HUD thresholds are for family income, while ACS published tables are for household income. It sounds like your predecessor used household income, but that might not be the most precise option. You may want to use the IPUMS system to get family data -- again, send me a direct message and we can discuss the nuances further.
  • This is definitely helpful for our work, thanks!. However, what my manager is primarily interested in is how someone took data from 2008 and used it to estimate the low income homeowner rate in 2010. I was thinking they used some form of linear extrapolation using the rate of change over previous years, or something along those lines. Do you know if there's a way to do that that's professionally supported? If not, we'll probably just abandon that notion and use either your methodology or switch to using an AMI measurement.
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  • This is definitely helpful for our work, thanks!. However, what my manager is primarily interested in is how someone took data from 2008 and used it to estimate the low income homeowner rate in 2010. I was thinking they used some form of linear extrapolation using the rate of change over previous years, or something along those lines. Do you know if there's a way to do that that's professionally supported? If not, we'll probably just abandon that notion and use either your methodology or switch to using an AMI measurement.
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