PolicyEngine / PolicyEngine/microcosm
Add county-crosswalked FNS SNAP data as a second congressional-district benchmark
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- Dominant language
- Python
- Stars
- 0
- Forks
- 4
- Avg merge
- 1d 3h
- Merged PRs (30d)
- 94
Description
Problem
CD-level SNAP validation currently has one lens: ACS S2201 district household estimates (#240, PR #241) — a survey estimate with its own sampling error. Calibrating or validating against a single noisy benchmark launders that noise into confident-looking district results.
Proposal
USDA FNS publishes county-level SNAP participation and issuance (bi-annual). Population-weighted county→CD crosswalk (Census blocks or MCDC geocorr) yields an administrative district benchmark independent of ACS sampling error.
- Ledger-side: ingest the FNS county bi-annual file as a source package
- Crosswalk counties to current-vintage CDs (the #277 block ladder / #205 vintage translation machinery is directly reusable)
- Add as a second
validation_onlyfamily besidesnap_local_proxy - Promotion rule: CD SNAP targets stay validation-only until the two independent benchmarks corroborate each other district-by-district; divergence localizes either thin raw support or a real modeling gap
Context
From the SNAP research readout follow-ups: congressional-district SNAP results should remain exploratory until independently benchmarked. This issue defines what 'independently benchmarked' means concretely.
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start by reading the existing ACS district benchmark from #240 and PR #241, then inspect the #277 block ladder and #205 vintage translation machinery for reusable crosswalk logic. Confirm how source packages and validation_only families are represented before defining the FNS county-file path. Done means the county-crosswalked benchmark is ingested, compared district-by-district with snap_local_proxy, and remains validation-only until corroboration.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- python
- Domain
- data-engineering
- Issue type
- Feature
- Difficulty
- 5/5
- Estimated time
- Over a week
- Activity status
- Quiet
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 30/100