This tool set provides a set of functions to fit the nested Dirichlet process mixture of products of multinomial distributions (NDPMPM) model for nested categorical household data in the presence of impossible combinations. It has direct applications in generating synthetic nested household data.
This package fits a Bayesian model for estimating the joint distribution of multivariate categorical data when units are nested within groups. Such data arise frequently in social science settings, for example, people living in households. The model assumes that (i) each group is a member of a group-level latent class, and (ii) each unit is a member of a unit-level latent class nested within its group-level latent class. This structure allows the model to capture dependence among units in the same group. It also facilitates simultaneous modeling of variables at both group and unit levels. We develop a version of the model that assigns zero probability to groups and units with physically impossible combinations of variables. The software generates synthetic household level data for the variables in the decennial census using a subset of structural zeros defined by edit constraints from the American Community Survey. In this version, alterations of the edit constraints must be done directly in the source code.