The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) recently requested Econometrica, Inc., to assess the analytical usefulness of the American Housing Survey’s (AHS) content.  The national AHS collects information from over 50,000 households every two years using an instrument that allows researchers and policy analysts to document housing problems and evaluate the operations of the housing market and of policies designed to improve housing.  The magnitude of the AHS makes it a costly survey for HUD and imposes significant burdens on the respondents.  As such, HUD asked the authors to examine the AHS report and data set to identify any elements that have some or all of these characteristics:



  • They have very little variation in value, either cross-sectionally or longitudinally.
  • They exhibit unreasonable year-to-year changes for the same household or housing unit.
  • They are used by few researchers, and those uses are not of notable scientific or policy importance.


The goal is to streamline the AHS “by eliminating or modifying content that is currently of marginal usefulness” to reduce the cost to the government and lessen the burden imposed on the public.  Streamlining also could create opportunities to add new and more policy-important content to the AHS. Read More…