SimPaths
Life Course Microsimulation
SimPaths is an open-source framework for modelling individual and household life courses. It projects how people’s careers, family relationships, health and financial circumstances evolve over time and interact with one another. Its modular design supports analysis of alternative assumptions about tax and benefit systems, sensitivity to parameter estimates, and different approaches to projecting labour and leisure, consumption and saving decisions.
Standardised assumptions and data sources facilitate adaptation across countries. Models based on the framework currently exist for the UK, Greece, Hungary, Italy and Poland, with Germany, Spain and Sweden under development.
All source code is freely available for download under a European Free/Open Source Software (F/OSS) EUPL-1.2 license, alongside evolving, increasingly detailed documentation.
Model features
- Connected life domains
- Education, work, family life, health and finances evolve together, with earlier circumstances influencing later outcomes.
- Behavioural responses
- Employment responds to financial incentives and family circumstances. A forward-looking option also models consumption and saving.
- Tax–benefit detail
- Results from tax–benefit models link policy rules to disposable income for different working hours and family circumstances.
- Alternative assumptions
- Vary economic and demographic assumptions, compare behavioural specifications, and test sensitivity to estimated parameters.
Policy analysis over the life course
Together, these features allow policies to be compared by their effects on incomes, behaviour and inequalities over time.
Use SimPaths
Try a first simulation using the training population and tax–benefit data included in the repository. This lets you check the installation before preparing inputs for your own research.