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Clarify SIPP is public-use; only IRS-PUF is access-restricted #809

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Clarify SIPP is public-use; only IRS-PUF is access-restricted #809

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1 change: 1 addition & 0 deletions changelog.d/correct-sipp-licensing-language.fixed.md
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Clarified SIPP licensing language in `policyengine_us_data/datasets/sipp/README.md`: SIPP public-use data is unrestricted (no per-user license, agreement, or registration). Of the six upstream microdata sources the Enhanced CPS pipeline ingests (CPS, ACS, SCF, ORG, SIPP, IRS-PUF), only IRS-PUF has a genuine access restriction. Fixes #808.
19 changes: 19 additions & 0 deletions policyengine_us_data/datasets/sipp/README.md
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Expand Up @@ -39,3 +39,22 @@ The raw SIPP CSVs (`pu2023.csv` and the slim variant `pu2023_slim.csv`)
are mirrored on the `PolicyEngine/policyengine-us-data` HuggingFace model
repo and downloaded on demand when a training run is needed. They are
not vendored in this Git repository.

## Licensing

SIPP public-use files are, as the name implies, **public-use data** — no
per-user license, data-use agreement, or registration is required to
download or redistribute them. We mirror them on our HuggingFace model
repo purely as a caching convenience (Census's own hosting is slow and
occasionally unavailable), not to work around any access restriction.

This matters because PolicyEngine's enhanced CPS pipeline ingests several
different upstream microdata sources, and only **one** of them —
**IRS Public Use File (PUF)** — has any genuine access restriction. PUF
requires agreeing to IRS's terms of use before download, even though the
file is itself intended for public release. CPS, ACS, SCF, ORG, and SIPP
are all unrestricted public-use. If you are writing about the pipeline's
licensing posture (for a paper, replication packet, or TRACE TRO), only
IRS-PUF should appear in the restricted column.

See issue #808 for the background on this correction.
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