“There are a lot of kids out there who need help, who are getting a lot of negative reinforcement. And is there more that we can do to give them the sense that their country cares about them and values them and is willing to invest in them?”
– President Barack Obama, July 19, 2013
Working in Tableau, with data from the My Brother’s Keeper initiative, this visualization explores the persistent opportunity gaps faced by people of color in the United States. My Brother's Keeper (MBK) is a federal initiative launched in February of 2014 and represents an interagency effort to improve measurably the expected educational and life outcomes for boys and young men of color. The MBK Task Force collaborated with the Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics and federal statistical agencies to pull together new statistics for key indicators - derived from existing, publicly available datasets - cross tabulated for race and gender for the first time.
Working with 3 data sets collected from 2001 to 2013, this dashboard looks at the challenges faced by specific racial/ethnic groups starting from birth. Data includes family structure and children’s living arrangements, specifically children ages 0-17 broken down into categories by parents within the household and then by sex and race/ethnicity. The other chosen data set looks at rate of birth to young adult women ages 18 to 19 per 1,000 women by race/ethnicity, then comparing this to a data set representing the percentage of children ages 0-17 in poverty by age group, sex, and race/ethnicity.
Working with 3 data sets collected from 2001 to 2013, this dashboard looks at the challenges faced by specific racial/ethnic groups starting from birth. Data includes family structure and children’s living arrangements, specifically children ages 0-17 broken down into categories by parents within the household and then by sex and race/ethnicity. The other chosen data set looks at rate of birth to young adult women ages 18 to 19 per 1,000 women by race/ethnicity, then comparing this to a data set representing the percentage of children ages 0-17 in poverty by age group, sex, and race/ethnicity.
The goal of the dashboard was to present an overarching view of the overwhelming challenges faced by specific racial/ethnic groups starting from birth. Keeping in mind potential color-blind readers, a homogenous color scheme was chosen across all visualizations to allow the viewer to draw conclusions about each group with greater speed and clarity.
The visualization on the left shows family structure by race. Certain groups in the data were combined so as to avoid unnecessary specificity and to clarify the visual such as “White, non-Hispanic” and “White alone, non-Hispanic”. The group “All other, non-Hispanic” was removed from the visualization so as not to distract from the focus of the comparisons being made. Originally, the visualization included was a circle chart color-coded by family structure. The competing colors in the dashboard however were distracting compared to the otherwise uniform color coding scheme and it was difficult to quickly and clearly identify the family structure of each grouping. This new visualization is clearly labeled and better fits within the larger messaging of the dashboard.
To look more specifically at this data, the bar graph alongside the right of the dashboard shows the instance of families raised by a single mother amongst blacks, hispanics, whites, and asians/pacific islanders. The disparity is quite stark between all groups.
To compare these family dynamics alongside socio-economic factors, the dashboard shows two line graphs, one displaying the rate of birth by race to women ages 18 to 19 and the other showing percentage of children ages 0-17 in poverty by race/ethnicity. While young mothers are much more common among blacks and hispanics, they have actually been in decline over the last decade. The similarities between the two charts show an obvious correlation but there are are also some clear differences, such as the fact that poverty is more extreme in black groups than hispanic, however birth rates to adolescent mothers are higher among hispanic women than black women. While whites and asian/pacific islanders have similarly lower poverty rates and have the lowest numbers of teenage births overall, whites show significantly higher rates of adolescent births.
While the dashboard is effective in communicating an overall picture of the opportunity gaps in the United States, future directions would include exploring these type of questions measured over time against initiatives formed to combat these challenges. This would allow for identification of what public and private efforts are working and how to expand upon them.
The visualization on the left shows family structure by race. Certain groups in the data were combined so as to avoid unnecessary specificity and to clarify the visual such as “White, non-Hispanic” and “White alone, non-Hispanic”. The group “All other, non-Hispanic” was removed from the visualization so as not to distract from the focus of the comparisons being made. Originally, the visualization included was a circle chart color-coded by family structure. The competing colors in the dashboard however were distracting compared to the otherwise uniform color coding scheme and it was difficult to quickly and clearly identify the family structure of each grouping. This new visualization is clearly labeled and better fits within the larger messaging of the dashboard.
To look more specifically at this data, the bar graph alongside the right of the dashboard shows the instance of families raised by a single mother amongst blacks, hispanics, whites, and asians/pacific islanders. The disparity is quite stark between all groups.
To compare these family dynamics alongside socio-economic factors, the dashboard shows two line graphs, one displaying the rate of birth by race to women ages 18 to 19 and the other showing percentage of children ages 0-17 in poverty by race/ethnicity. While young mothers are much more common among blacks and hispanics, they have actually been in decline over the last decade. The similarities between the two charts show an obvious correlation but there are are also some clear differences, such as the fact that poverty is more extreme in black groups than hispanic, however birth rates to adolescent mothers are higher among hispanic women than black women. While whites and asian/pacific islanders have similarly lower poverty rates and have the lowest numbers of teenage births overall, whites show significantly higher rates of adolescent births.
While the dashboard is effective in communicating an overall picture of the opportunity gaps in the United States, future directions would include exploring these type of questions measured over time against initiatives formed to combat these challenges. This would allow for identification of what public and private efforts are working and how to expand upon them.