Datasets derived from US census data

Folktables is a Python package that provides access to datasets derived from the US Census, facilitating the benchmarking of machine learning algorithms. The package includes a suite of pre-defined prediction tasks in domains including income, employment, health, transportation, and housing, and also includes tools for creating new prediction tasks of interest in the US Census data ecosystem. The package additionally enables systematic studies of the effect of distribution shift, as each prediction task can be instantiated on datasets spanning multiple years and all states within the US.

Why the name? Folktables is a neologism describing tabular data about individuals. It emphasizes that data has the power to create and shape narratives about populations and challenges us to think carefully about the data we collect and use.

For more information about these datasets, including the motivations behind their curation and some examples of empirical findings, please see our paper.