MicMac Software

The MicMac software was developed at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock. The software development was guided by the following principles:

1. The software should be free with no license restrictions. Transparency is mandatory. Open-source software is used to give the user the freedom to make adjustments and extensions. 
2. The software should be computationally efficient to handle large numbers of individual life courses with relatively large attributes (states). 
3. MicMac provides tools without forcing the user to adopt the solutions we suggest. Well-defined interfaces should assure flexibility and freedom. 

The MicMac software structure consists of a pre-processor, a processor and a post-processor. The pre-processor is a suite of R functions to estimate transition rates from data and to prepare the input data. The processor performs the actual simulation. It consists of two modules: a module that implements the cohort-component model (Mac) and a module that implements the microsimulation (Mic). The latter module is referred as the MicCore. It is written in Java. The postprocessor is a suite of R functions to tabulate, summarize and graphically display the results.

 The MicMac software is freely available on the website of Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research