Nonresponse Imputations and Related Measurement Issues in the CPI for Shelter

Lara Loewenstein, Hugh G. Montag and Randal Verbrugge

No 35250, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Shelter is the largest component of US consumer price index (CPI) inflation; therefore, the accuracy of shelter inflation is critical for the accuracy of overall CPI inflation. Nonresponse in the BLS Housing Survey, which underpins the measurement of CPI shelter inflation, has increased since 2000 and now represents roughly 40 percent of total observations. Missing rent data are currently imputed using a class-mean approach based on rent tier, potentially resulting in biased imputations, as we find that nonresponse is correlated with factors beyond rent tier. We study alternative simple imputation methods based on variables correlated with both nonresponse and rent growth, including structure type and tenure length. A simple model demonstrates that alternative methods could yield sharply different index biases. However, in practice, we find that these alternative methods yield similar shelter inflation indexes, suggesting that any index bias may be modest.

JEL-codes: C81 E31 R31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-05
Note: TWP
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Forthcoming: Nonresponse Imputations and Related Measurement Issues in the CPI for Shelter , Lara Loewenstein, Hugh Montag, Randal Verbrugge. in Measurement of Housing and the Housing Sector , Garner, Gyourko, and Porter. 2026

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w35250.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

Related works:
Chapter: Nonresponse Imputations and Related Measurement Issues in the CPI for Shelter (2026)
Working Paper: Nonresponse Imputations and Related Measurement Issues in the CPI for Shelter (2026)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35250

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w35250
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().