The Creation and Use of the SIPP Synthetic Beta

This paper reports on the creation of a fully synthetic Census Bureau data product called the SIPP Synthetic Beta (SSB). It serves as an update to a previous paper, Benedetto, Stinson, and Abowd (2013), which described version 5.0 of the SSB. Our purpose is to inform users of the SSB about how the file was created and to provide an example of the application of data synthesis methods to those doing research in this area. We also hope to provide some guidance for other organizations which might be interested in creating their own synthetic data products.