Code for Analysis of Poverty Using Tax-Calculator
These files lay out steps for analyzing the effect to the US Census Bureau's Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) of a reform run using the open source Tax-Calculator tax microsimulation model.
For more information, consult the March 2019 presentation to the Policy Simulation Library (PSL) meeting, psl_presentation_v2.pdf
The files assume that you have created an extract of the CPS ASEC for a single year at the University of Minnesota's IPUMS service. See the files or the presentation for the IPUMS variables needed.
The files are named in order of sequence:
tcpov1_make_asec.do: Stata do file for turning an IPUMS CPS ASEC extract in Stata format into csv format. If your IPUMS extract is already in csv format, this step is unnecessary.tcpov2a_make_taxsim27.R: R file based heavily on prior code from Sam Portnow. This converts the IPUMS CPS ASEC extract in csv format into a file that is grouped by tax units.tcpov2b_make_tc_file.do: Just a placeholder file telling you to run Tax-Calculator's built-in TAXSIM27 script on the file produced in the prior step.tcpov3_run_reform.do: Placeholder file telling you to run both a baseline and reform sim in Tax-Calculator's CLI using the file produced in the prior step as the database file.tcpov4_merge_back.do: Stata do file for merging Tax-Calculator results back into the CPS ASEC and tabulating poverty impacts.