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Re: More on "Weight"

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Manny & Hilary asked:

From: American Housing Survey (AHS) ListServ <ahs@huduser.gov>

Can you use the "weight" variable with any other variable? For example
is you
want to know the total # of units with rents between $0 and $500 in an SMSA,
then can you get a subset of data that meets that criteria and sum the weight
for the observations to get an estimate of the total # of units in the SMSA
with rents between $0 and $500?



Additionally, if you switch your focus to households and create a subset of
data of households with incomes between $0 and $10000 in an SMSA, then can you
sum the weight for those observations to get an estimate of the total # of
households in the SMSA with incomes between $0 and $10000?



Thanks for assistance!
----
The answer is essentially Yes, but with some warnings.

What you asked about is fine for a Metro file. But for a National file,
the number of cases in any particular MSA would be too small to be of value
for that particular MSA. (There are exceptions, however. These are the
embedded metros in national files -- in 1995 & 1999: Chicago, New York,
Detroit, Los Angeles, Newark/Northern NJ, Philadelphia.)
-- David

David Kantor
Institute for Policy Studies
Johns Hopkins University
dkantor@jhu.edu
410-516-5404