El: A Program for Ecological Inference

Abstract

The program EI provides a method of inferring individual behavior from aggregate data. It implements the statistical procedures, diagnostics, and graphics from the book A Solution to the Ecological Inference Problem: Reconstructing Individual Behavior from Aggregate Data (King 1997). Ecological inference, as traditionally defined, is the process of using aggregate (i.e., “ecological”) data to infer discrete individual-level relationships of interest when individual- level data are not available. Ecological inferences are required in political science research when individual-level surveys are unavailable (e.g., local or comparative electoral poli- tics), unreliable (racial politics), insufficient (political geography), or infeasible (political history). They are also required in numerous areas of major significance in public policy (e.g., for applying the Voting Rights Act) and other academic disciplines ranging from epidemiology and marketing to sociology and quantitative history.