policyengine-us-data 1.71.1

A package to create representative microdata for the US.

PolicyEngine US Data

Installation

While it is possible to install via PyPi:

pip install policyengine-us-data

the recommended installation is

pip install -e .[dev]

which installs the development dependencies in a reference-only manner (so that changes to the package code will be reflected immediately); policyengine-us-data is a dev package and not intended for direct access.

SSA Data Sources

The following SSA data sources are used in this project:

• Latest Trustee's Report (2025) - Source for social_security_aux.csv (extracted via extract_ssa_costs.py)
• Single Year Supplementary Tables (2025) - Long-range demographic and economic projections
• Single Year Age Demographic Projections (2024 - latest published) - Source for SSPopJul_TR2024.csv population data

Building the Paper

Prerequisites

The paper requires a LaTeX distribution (e.g., TeXLive or MiKTeX) with the following packages:

• graphicx (for figures)
• amsmath (for mathematical notation)
• natbib (for bibliography management)
• hyperref (for PDF links)
• booktabs (for tables)
• geometry (for page layout)
• microtype (for typography)
• xcolor (for colored links)

On Ubuntu/Debian, you can install these with:

sudo apt-get install texlive-latex-base texlive-latex-recommended texlive-latex-extra texlive-fonts-recommended

On macOS with Homebrew:

brew install --cask mactex

Building

To build the paper:

make paper

To clean LaTeX build files:

make clean-paper

The output PDF will be at paper/main.pdf.

Building the Documentation

Prerequisites

The documentation uses Jupyter Book 2 (pre-release) with MyST. To install:

# Install Jupyter Book 2 pre-release
pip install --pre "jupyter-book==2.*"

# Install MyST CLI
npm install -g mystmd

Building

To build and serve the documentation locally:

cd docs
myst start

Or alternatively from the project root:

jupyter book start docs

Both commands will start a local server at http://localhost:3001 where you can view the documentation.

The legacy Makefile command:

make documentation

Note: The Makefile uses the older jb command syntax which may not work with Jupyter Book 2. Use myst start or jupyter book start docs instead.