income

WarningStaging

Built from the latest training run on 2026-09-30 17:45 UTC, not from a released model set. The released documentation is at https://matter.indigo.engineering/docs/.

Overview

This model estimates individual employment income as a continuous value.

Built as a boosted tree regressor on survey data, it integrates salary benchmarks, household indicators, voter registration history, and area-level economic context to produce income estimates.

These scores give organizations a more granular view of economic circumstances than census-tract averages alone, supporting targeted outreach around economic policy and financial assistance.

  • approach: boosted tree regressor
  • training rows: 5,309
  • last updated: 2026-09-14 02:59:12

Validation

metric value
R² (correlation) 0.48
root mean squared error 62,937
mean absolute error 32,799
huber loss 32,798
gini coefficient 0.65

Lift Chart

Each bar shows how much more common the outcome is within a score decile than in the population overall. Bars taller than the dashed line (lift of 1) mean the model’s top-ranked groups concentrate the outcome; a steady decline from decile 1 to 10 indicates the model is ranking effectively.

Calibration Plot

Bars of similar height within each decile indicate well-calibrated predictions. Systematic differences reveal where the model over- or under-predicts.

Cumulative Gains

The further the model curve bows above the diagonal, the better the model concentrates the outcome in its top-ranked predictions.

Decile Analysis Table

decile count mean actual mean predicted mae lift
10 129 209,846 240,942 31,095 3.23
9 129 89,317 105,516 16,199 1.37
8 128 63,746 82,112 18,366 0.98
7 129 65,547 65,024 523 1.01
6 128 53,242 51,026 2,216 0.82
5 129 41,609 40,698 911 0.64
4 128 37,285 32,271 5,014 0.57
3 129 34,516 26,464 8,051 0.53
2 128 27,832 18,872 8,960 0.43
1 129 26,124 8,059 18,065 0.40

Architecture

This model is a boosted-tree regressor trained with BigQuery ML.

Hyperparameter configuration

  • max iterations: 20
  • learn rate: 0.2938
  • l1 regularization: 1.721e-09
  • l2 regularization: 0.9959
  • min relative progress: 0.01
  • early stop: TRUE
  • input label columns: employment_income
  • data split method: AUTO_SPLIT
  • max tree depth: 5
  • subsample: 0.739
  • min split loss: 0
  • num trials: 12
  • max parallel trials: 4
  • hparam tuning objectives: R_SQUARED
  • enable global explain: TRUE
  • category encoding method: LABEL_ENCODING
  • booster type: GBTREE
  • num parallel tree: 1
  • tree method: AUTO
  • min tree child weight: 1
  • instance weight column: sample_weight
  • xgboost version: 0.9

Features

Importance

Interaction terms are split evenly between the features they combine.

Sourcing

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

  • tract % medicaid / means-tested public insurance

Attom Property Data API

  • property tax billed

CDC PLACES

  • tract % adults with a routine checkup

Revelio Labs

  • current position salary
  • current position tenure (days)

State voter files (via TargetSmart)

  • female

TargetSmart

  • abortion issue motivation score
  • campaign finance reform score
  • cannabis legalization support score
  • children present score
  • college graduate score
  • double negative democrat score
  • early vote / absentee vote score
  • homeowner score
  • income rank
  • working class score

U.S. Census American Community Survey

  • block group % female

U.S. Census CPS Annual Social and Economic Supplement

  • current medicare coverage
  • private insurance policyholder
  • wage and salary income

unknown

  • pred pct owner occupied housing units with children

Verisk (via TargetSmart)

  • children age 0–5 in household
  • homeowner
  • income
  • senior present in household

Implementation

Prediction distribution

statistic value
mean 58,102
std dev 54,827
min 0
25th 30,355
median 50,287
75th 74,365
max 1,196,183

External validity

Our model indicates an average annual employment income of $58,102 across scored person records. For 2024, FRED reports a median personal income of $45,140 and a mean personal income of $67,080 for U.S. residents age 15+ (inclusive of people not in the workforce).