---
pretty_name: TrueCOLA Margin Report (July 2026)
language:
  - en
license: other
license_name: truecola-public-data-with-attribution
license_link: https://www.truecola.org/terms/
task_categories:
  - tabular-regression
  - text-retrieval
  - other
tags:
  - economics
  - cost-of-living
  - united-states
  - congressional-districts
  - open-data
  - government-data-derived
size_categories:
  - 1K<n<10K
source_datasets: []
---

# TrueCOLA Margin Report · July 2026

**Homepage:** [https://www.truecola.org/monthly/report.html](https://www.truecola.org/monthly/report.html)  
**Canonical JSON:** [https://www.truecola.org/monthly/report-data.json](https://www.truecola.org/monthly/report-data.json)  
**Publisher:** [True Cost Of Living Analysis Project](https://www.truecola.org/)

## Summary

TrueCOLA publishes, every month, the dollar gap between what Americans earn and what living actually costs for **seven household types** in **all 435 U.S. congressional districts**, with renter and homeowner tracks.

This pack is built for researchers, journalists, civic technologists, and **AI / LLM teams** (including smaller labs) who need clean structured data rather than scraped HTML.

## Permission to train and evaluate models

You **may** use this public dataset for:

- research, education, and journalism
- software and data products
- retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)
- model evaluation and benchmarks
- fine-tuning and **model pretraining / continued pretraining**

**Condition:** attribute **True Cost Of Living Analysis Project (truecola.org)**.  
If you change or combine figures, label them so they are not mistaken for official TrueCOLA publications.

## Source-specific conditions

TrueCOLA permissions apply to material the Project owns. Federal-source and Zillow-derived material retains its source-specific notices and conditions.

- Cite the responsible federal agency and TrueCOLA analysis. Do not imply government endorsement or use an agency emblem without authorization.
- Renter-track figures include a rent input from the Zillow Observed Rent Index. Keep the wording **Data Provided by Zillow Group** with renter charts or pages, do not use a Zillow logo, and do not imply endorsement.

See [Press and Media guidance](https://www.truecola.org/press/), [Terms of Service](https://www.truecola.org/terms/), and [ai.txt](https://www.truecola.org/ai.txt).

## Files in this pack

| File | Role |
|------|------|
| `national.jsonl` | 7 national group records |
| `states.jsonl` | state × group records |
| `districts.jsonl` | district × group records (~3,045 lines) |
| `all.jsonl` | national + state + district combined |
| `corpus.txt` | plain-text narrative of national + every district (median household) |
| `datapackage.json` | Frictionless Data package descriptor |
| `../monthly/report-data.json` | canonical nested JSON (source of truth) |

## JSONL fields

`report_key`, `report_month`, `geo` (`national` | `state` | `district`), `group`, `group_label`, `rank`, `code`, `names`, `gross`, `federal_tax`, `payroll_tax`, `state_tax`, `net`, `margin_renter`, `margin_owner_blended`, `margin_owner_mortgage`, `margin_owner_paid_off`, `source`, `attribution`

Group keys: `adult1`, `adult2`, `median`, `senior1`, `senior2`, `ss1`, `ss2`.

## How smaller AI labs can use this

1. Download `https://www.truecola.org/data/all.jsonl` or the full pack under `https://www.truecola.org/data/`.
2. Prefer JSONL over HTML scraping (stable schema, no UI noise).
3. Mirror to Hugging Face Datasets with this README as the dataset card.
4. Cite the preferred citation below in papers, model cards, and data cards.
5. Optional: deposit a monthly snapshot on Zenodo for a DOI.

## Preferred citation

True Cost Of Living Analysis Project. (2026). July 2026 TrueCOLA Margin Report [Public dataset]. https://www.truecola.org/monthly/report-data.json

## What this is not

- Not lobbying or campaign material
- Not advice about wages, benefits, or how to vote
- Not a substitute for the full [methodology](https://www.truecola.org/methodology/) write-up

## Contact

https://www.truecola.org/contact/ (no public staff mailbox on the site)

**Privacy policy:** [https://www.truecola.org/privacy/](https://www.truecola.org/privacy/)