TSCI v1.1 True Shelter & Family Cost Index

Rent. Mortgage. Insurance. Kid. TSCI_2026.6_v2.1.6_topo_fix As of 2026-05-11 Owner: Patrick Neil Bradley (Nero) Mirror: TCBI v1.5_polish architecture
Renter Owner

TSCI Methodology

Live federal series. County values pulled direct from Census ACS5 2023: B25064 median gross rent, B25071 rent-as-%-HH-income, B19013 median HH income, B01003 population.

State rollup = pop-weighted mean of county values (B01003 weights). Rent Index = county_rent / national pop-weighted mean × 100. US = 100.

Pending domains: D2 Mortgage (FRED MORTGAGE30US + ACS B25077), D3 Insurance (NAIC + III), D4 Childcare (DOL NDCP — killer feature), D5 Composite Burden Ratio.

Calibration audit (v1.1): 1062/3212 D3 HO counties at lower clamp (low-rent floor); 65/152 D4 cc-county-adj at lower clamp. Clamp [0.7,1.5] working as designed.

Provenance flags: LIVE PENDING PROXY-COUNTY-ADJ

📋 TSCI — Methodology & Sources TSCI_2026.6_v2.1.6_topo_fix

True Shelter & Family Cost Index. Live federal data. Pop-weighted county aggregation. Every value carries provenance.

Coverage at a glance

National choropleth covering all 50 states, DC, Puerto Rico, and 3,142 US counties at county-level resolution. Tract-level layer deferred to TSCI v2.1+ — see migration playbook for sprint sequence. NYC borough friendly names included via COUNTY_NAME_ALIASES (Brooklyn, Manhattan, Bronx, Queens, Staten Island).

Federal data sources

SeriesIdentifierUsed for
Census ACS5 2023 — Median Gross RentB25064_001ED1 Rent · county-level
Census ACS5 2023 — Median Home ValueB25077_001ED2 Mortgage · home value baseline
Census ACS5 2023 — Median Owner Costs with MortgageB25088_001ED2 Mortgage · monthly P+I+T+I
Census ACS5 2023 — Median Household IncomeB19013_001EBurden % (rent/income, owner cost/income)
DOL National Database of Childcare PricesDOL Women's Bureau NDCP 2018 (inflation-adjusted)D4 Childcare · county-level all 50 states + PR
NAIC Homeowners HO-3 / Renters HO-42022 Annual Report public tablesD3 Insurance · state-level annualized premiums
us-atlas counties-10m.json + states-10m.jsonnpm us-atlas@3National/state choropleth geometry
BLS CPI Metro Area SeriesCBSA-level CUUR codesBLS_METROS list (21 metros)

Core formulas

Owner monthly nut: owner_cost + cc_m + ho_ins/12
Owner burden: (owner_nut × 12) / median_household_income
Renter burden: (rent × 12) / median_household_income
Price-to-Income (P/I): median_home_value / median_household_income
TSCI Composite Index (ti): weighted aggregate of rent burden, owner burden, P/I, childcare share — pop-weighted at state/national level.

Clamping & calibration

State pop-weighted aggregation across counties uses ACS B01003 population. Counties with suppressed values are excluded from aggregation. Insurance clamps documented in Calibration_Audit sheet: 33.1% of states at HO insurance floor (NAIC published-precision limit); 42.8% of childcare-counties hit lower clamp in NDCP.

Provenance flag taxonomy

LIVE-ACS-COUNTY Direct Census ACS5 county value

LIVE-DOL-NDCP Direct DOL childcare county value

LIVE-NAIC-STATE Direct NAIC HO-3/HO-4 state premium

PROXY-COUNTY-ADJ County via state baseline × rent ratio

PROXY-STATE-FLAT County inherits state value flat

CLAMP-LOW / CLAMP-HIGH Value at published-precision boundary

DATA-SUPPRESSED ACS small-N suppression — dropped from aggregation

Vintage timeline

Census ACS5 2023 covers 2019-2023 conditions (released Dec 2024). DOL NDCP base year 2018, inflated to 2023 dollars. NAIC HO-3/HO-4 from 2022 annual report. Note: ACS5 2024 release expected Dec 2026.

Known constraints

Currently county-level only. No tract resolution layer. See TCBI v3.0.0 for what tract resolution looks like — TSCI tract layer is the next planned major release.
• Childcare is the only domain with universal county coverage. Insurance is state-only.
• 8 states (AR, CT, IN, MO, NM, PA, VT) plus Puerto Rico are proxy-derived for one or more childcare slots.
• Composite weights calibrated against a synthetic family-of-4 reference budget.