Dr. Emily Molfino is the Special Assistant to the Chief Scientist at the U.S. Census Bureau. Her work focuses on improving data dissemination and the use of administrative data for the Census. While previously at the Census, Dr. Molfino worked extensively on modernizing the American Housing Survey using administrative data and process improvements. During this time, Dr. Molfino also produced research on the use of housing administrative data, which was published in Cityscape during her work at HUD.
Episode Description
Where do you live? Who are your neighbors? Do you rent or own? What housing is available in your community? Today’s episode of stats and stories focuses on how and why we want to understand Americans’ experience with housing, with guest Dr. Emily Molfino.
+Full Transcript
John Bailer
Where do you live? Who are your neighbors? Do you rent or own? How old is your residence? Are you behind on rent? What housing is available in your community? Today's episode of Stats and Stories focuses on how and why we want to understand America's experience with housing. I'm John Bailer. Stats and Stories is a production of Miami University's Department of Statistics and media journalism and film, as well as the American Statistical Association. Joining me as panelist is Rosemary Pennington, professor in the Department of media journalism. And so our guest today is Emily Molfino. Molfino is a special assistant working with the Chief Scientist and Chief Data Officer at the US Census Bureau. Prior to this position, Dr. Molfino worked in the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. Dr. Molfino has worked extensively on modernizing the American Housing Survey and has looked at using housing administrative data to improve the information obtained from this survey. Emily, thank you so much for being here today.
Emily Molfino
Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
John Bailer
We're delighted to have you, Emily. To start our conversation, what is the American Housing Survey? And you know, maybe if you'd like to talk about something different, I know that there's now even a household pulse survey. I don't know what anybody thinks about surveys, what kind of surveys are done on households? So can you just give us a little bit of context?
Emily Molfino
Great. So the American Housing Survey is the nation's largest survey on housing units. And it covers topics, a wide range of topics, everything from the physical characteristics of the home, or the housing unit, to the demographics of the people who live within, within the home itself. It's been going on since 1973, which is very exciting. We don't usually have surveys that go that far back. Another exciting characteristic about the American Housing Survey is that it's longitudinal. So we go back to the same housing unit every two years. Even if the people inside the housing unit move, we still go back to the housing unit and collect information about what might have changed about that housing unit. Did anyone move in when anyone moved out? How did housing costs change? And this longitudinal aspect of the American Housing Survey makes it so unique, and allows us to learn so much about the housing stock and the housing needs of the US population?
Rosemary Pennington
So what kinds of data are you gathering? And why is it important to know this?
Emily Molfino
Yeah, so we are collecting every survey wave. So the American Housing surveys are collected every two years, and every survey wave has the base survey. So it's everything about how many bedrooms? How many bathrooms, if physical characteristics. Did you do any home improvement projects on your house? What do you live nearby? What are your housing costs, and we also capture information about the people who live within the house, basic demographics, age, race and ethnicity. You might have moved in if they're a recent mover, we also have a supplementary module. So these rotate every two years, based on current events, or the interest of those at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. So we've recently done a module about emergency management and how prepared individuals are for an emergency if there was an emergency to happen. We've done modules about pets, which is I know, you did you might think, why would why would census and Housing and Urban Development want to do a module about pets, but it's important, especially going back to about emergency management and preparedness is when people have to leave their homes, they want to take their pets and this really started the conversation going about we we might want to learn more about the prevalence of pets in housing units.
John Bailer
So you talked about the same housing unit that's being surveyed, which is kind of interesting, you know, we tend to think about people being surveyed. So yeah, so now you're getting this yet had some list or some way to think you're out how to even select a household. And then are you asking the current residents of these units to respond and describe the place, you know, hey, Rosemary, did you do some work on your house? Did you add a room? I mean, is that kind of the nature of this?
Emily Molfino
Yes. So we so we the American Housing Survey is sampled from using the US Census Bureau's Master Address File. It is a fancy data file that is compiled from a bunch of other data sources that the census bureau has, and it's at the residential address level. So when a new sample is selected, the last sample for the American Housing Survey was done in 2015. And the sample was pulled from the Census Bureau's Master Address File, which is a great data product the Census Bureau has, that is a compilation from a couple of different sources. But essentially, it is a list of all the residential addresses in the US population, which makes it a great frame for the American Housing Survey to pull from. So the great mathematical statisticians at the US Census Bureau were able to pull a representative sample for the nation of about 100,000 housing units. So these are addresses that we're sampling from. And I say it's nationally representative, we could also create estimates down to the census division to get more regional comparisons. The American Housing Survey also collects samples from the largest metropolitan and Micropolitan Statistical areas, so places like LA, we take an oversample of these top 15 places so that we can also create estimates for these large cities. And every two years, every four years, there's a rotating sample of 10, other smaller statistical areas. So places like Richmond, Virginia, are not large enough to be in the top 15. But they are still interesting from a housing policies perspective. So we also tried to incorporate these over and over samples. We go back recently, we've been going back to the same areas every four years, to make sure we can have not just a national representative sample and make national estimates, but a comprehensive comparison of estimates for these micropolitan and metropolitan areas.
Rosemary Pennington
Emily, you mentioned that this is longitudinal data, and this dates back to like 1973. So I wonder what kind of trends have you had the census noticed in the data that you find particularly intriguing or interesting?
Emily Molfino
Yeah, so great. So the one thing about the American Housing Survey is that we unfortunately, do not have longitudinal weights as of yet. So we cannot make to specifically significant our analysis on the trends across time, especially longitudinally, but we do have the weight for a cross sectional so we could compare yours against each other. So we have found some very interesting trends about the changing if housing units themselves and the composition. So they're actually between 2003, and nine, there has been an increase of the number of an adult children living at home. And there has been an increase in the number of unrelated families living in one household to get it together. So some have turned this doubling up in a single housing unit. So this is differs from multi generational housing units. These are two unrelated family groups living together in the same housing unit. And so we have seen an increase in that especially between 2003 and 2009. And this is why I'm going to plug the the most recent American Housing Survey that is out. So the 2021 American Housing Survey data are out. And what is really exciting about this is that you can compare it to 2019. American Housing Survey, and since we went to the same housing unit, you could compare essentially, pre pandemic, to post pandemic. And there is going to be so much information I think we can learn about how housing units themselves have changed and we go urge to renovations, especially self renovations, we were stuck at home where we did DIY projects, right, but also how the family house the household composition has changed. So I invite the listeners go look at this data and see kind of what interesting trends you can see, between pre and post pandemic, we, the next phase of the American Housing Survey is actually this year 2023. So we can start getting maybe a bit more post pandemic, if that's the term you want to use right now, to see kind of are these trends stable? A bit. It was just really exciting. There is not really any other sent survey out there that had this opportunity that we essentially locked out. We were there before the pandemic, and then right after, which is super exciting.
John Bailer
You know, so you talked a little bit about, you know, kind of understanding the presence of pets and households and how that translated into kind of planning for emergency management. You've talked a little bit about how there's more, more adult children residing in households, there's also more unrelated families residing in the same households. You know, at some level, people are gonna say, Well, okay, so what? Right, you know, that yes, I get that, so what part of the story with the pets and the emergency management planning? You know, maybe there's some, if I've tried to locate a New Deal, do it yourself, how hardware store that that's also kind of a sign of times, but help us think about how these things that you've done, you've talked about as data products, what could or have kind of more general value to the larger society?
Emily Molfino
Yeah, so I'm going to talk about two things, two topics here. One is about housing quality, and also about housing cost. And so the American Housing Survey, we asked questions, asking respondents about the quality of their home, things about roof leaks, presence of mold, presence of rodents. That's a popular topic right now. And we can get a wee bit here at the Census Bureau, but also those at HUD, the policymakers can get a better understanding about the quality of the United States housing stock, which is very relevant to policy. I think, as a nation, we would like to have good housing quality and understand where housing quality may be lacking. And who is in who is impacted by low quality housing is important so that HUD and other other federal or non federal partners can help target their resources knowing that this population has poor housing quality, what can we do to help?
John Bailer
Okay, you're listening to Stats and Stories. Our guest today is survey researcher Emily Molfino.
Rosemary Pennington
I'm just curious. Emily, how did you get interested in researching housing?
Emily Molfino
It was happenstance. So my background, my PhD is actually in political science. My dissertation focused on post conflict reconstruction in developing countries.
John Bailer
Very, that sounds just completely irrelevant.
Emily Molfino
Infrastructure related to my graduate career, I knew I loved my topic. I loved the research, but I wanted to do non-academia. And I had the great opportunity to go to a postdoc position at Virginia Tech University, their social and Decision Analytics lab, to basically train as a social science and data scientist. So becoming a data scientist as a social scientist, which really opened my world to administrative data to the plethora of the data options out there in the world. And one of the projects I worked on, one of my first projects was about housing. And it was actually with the US Census Bureau, looking at housing administrative data. And I have just never, like I haven't really left that world housing data, whether it's from a survey or from administrative data. Fascinating, it is large, it is messy. It touches all aspects of life, from health to urban planning to education. And I've just never been bored. And I think that's just been key as I just get sucked into new topics. It's fascinating.
John Bailer
Yeah, you know, as I'm thinking about this, thinking about even the challenges that the Census has to try to list households that you're sampling from, you know, that you have a single family dwelling may be become a multifamily dwelling with some changes, or may ultimately be torn down, and an apartment is built in its place, or it may convert to, you know, something that's commercial, I just this idea of having to track the life of a physical structure, it seems like it's incredibly difficult. The other thing that I was thinking about as you're getting responses from residents of each of these places. And, you know, people seem to be less responsive to things like surveys, and perhaps we're all guilty of that, to an extent, to a certain degree. So what are some of the strategies that you use to address that, I guess, I'm kind of teasing the administrative connection.
Emily Molfino
Well, this is a problem of declining survey response rates nationwide, it's felt very deeply at the Census Bureau. But also, throughout the other survey groups who go out and interview, there is a respondent burden. And so the Census Bureau has had to think strategically and creatively on how we can help reduce that burden. And one way that we have done this, and this is both at the Census Bureau and with partnership at the Housing and Urban Development, is through the use of administrative data. And I think housing is a perfect example of doing this. So property data is public information, the county collects information about all the residences and the property in their area. For taxation purposes, they want to know the value of the land and the building on that land, to tax its residents. But to do that, they need detailed information. They need a number of bedrooms, they need your belt of things that impact their valuation of the housing value. And this data exists throughout the country. And it's public. And there are now data products out there that go out, put all this data to gather throughout the country to gather and deck one data file and it can be used. Why ask for your belt? What was the view? If I would ask you right now, what year is your housing unit built to your home? Would you know the exact year? Yes, I do. Oh, you do?
John Bailer
Oh, you guys often happen to be the same age as my younger son.
Emily Molfino
Oh, that's nice, nice. Index. Yeah, you have a baseline? Well, many people don't. Especially those that have not moved into their housing unit recently. Or renters. Think of a college kid who just moved into their first like off campus apartment, would they know when their housing is built? Not really. But it's in this property data. So we can link this data together saying, Okay, this address of the respondent, we can link it to the administrative data and pull that information over. We don't have to ask that question anymore. Or if they say, I don't know, we can say great, we can move on. And we can just use the value from the administrative data. The same is true about acreage. Uh, how large is your plot of land? I think that's it. who that is, I think exactly. Many people don't. And the American Housing Survey we asked for quite a level of detail like how big your lot is. And so that is actually one of the sources that the census, the Census Bureau and HUD decided, you know, what, it's better just to go with the administrative data response because I am sure local jurisdictions know exactly how big that lot is, right? And so why not just use that information, these avenues of research and opportunities where we can start with Using respondent and burden, increasing the quality of our data, rather than having to rely on an idle No, we can actually fill in a more accurate response. And I think we are just at the tip of the iceberg right now, on what's possible. There is so much research going on at the Census Bureau, on how we can better and more fully incorporate administrative data into our surveys, whether it be housing, or demographics, it this is an exciting kind of realm to be, I feel
Rosemary Pennington
Like in the news media, there tend to be sort of two stories about housing that come up most often. I mean, it's constantly the housing market, right, and like the rising cost of housing. And then the other one that I seem to see a fair amount of is sort of the lack of affordable housing, which are those are similar stories. Right. But I wonder, given your vantage point, what do you think there are stories about housing that journalists are missing that we need to know?
Emily Molfino
That there is an unmet need, and I think the American Housing Survey can help paint that picture quite well. So part of the American Housing Survey sample is we try to over sample a housing units that are in HUD in a HUD assisted program, whether it be a voucher program, public housing or their private multifamily, we try to oversample these populations, so that we can get a statistically sound estimates for them and their housing costs and their housing quality, but also allows us comparison, so if we can flag in the American Housing Survey sample, respond it to our HUD assisted so they receive some form of assistance from HUD, we can compare them to or view also people who don't get HUD assisted housing. But we know their income from the survey. So we can know if they qualify or not. So there is a significant chunk of the population who qualify for HUD assistance based on their income and based on where they live. But for whatever reason, don't. And we do not know from the survey why that is the case. It could be they're waiting in line to get hired assistants. Those stories have kind of they go ebb and flow inside the news about long waiting lists, to just get a voucher to get into public health. And we know those stories exist. And the American Housing Survey kind of allows us to see that population and see where they are seeing the impact. Are they seeing lower quality of housing? Do they feel less secure in the housing? Are they moving a lot? Are they overcrowded? And are there just too many people in the housing unit surveys that allow us to see that?
John Bailer
Okay, well, I'm afraid that's all the time we have for this episode of Stats and Stories. Thank you so much for joining us today. Stats and Stories is a partnership between Miami University’s Departments of Statistics, and Media, Journalism and Film, and the American Statistical Association. You can follow us on Twitter, Apple podcasts, or other places you can find podcasts. If you’d like to share your thoughts on the program send your email to statsandstories@miamioh.edu or check us out at statsandstories.net, and be sure to listen for future editions of Stats and Stories, where we discuss the statistics behind the stories and the stories behind the statistics.