The housing status variable indicates whether respondents own their homes outright or with a mortgage, or rent them from a local authority, private landlord, or housing association. Using weighted data, Figure 1 shows that around a third of respondents (33.6%) owned their homes outright whilst a further third (32.2%) are buying their homes. The remaining third of the sample were renting their homes, largely from private landlords (15.2% of the sample) but also from local authorities (7.1%) or housing associations (6.1%). A small percentage of respondents (5.9%) answered ‘Don’t know’ regarding their housing status and need to be coded as missing values on this variable. At the same time, we can simplify the variable into two categories: those who are renting their homes, and those who own or are buying their homes. The simplified variable is graphed in Figure 2, below which the details of the original and recoded variables are presented.
| Variable name | back_housstat |
| Number of cases | 1,405 |
| Number of categories | 6 |
| Categories to code as missing | ‘Don’t know’ |
| Cases to code as missing | 46 |
| Recoded variable name | back_housstat_bmv |
| Number of cases | 1,359 |
| Number of categories | 2 |
| New and old categories | ‘Renting’ = ‘Local authority’ + ‘Private rental’ + ‘Housing association’ ‘Own or buying’ = ‘Own outright’ + ‘Mortgage’ Missing = ‘Don’t know’ |
Privilege and Participation 