There’s a new big data project visualizing American childcare deserts and poverty. Visit ChildCareDeserts.org and you can see side-by-side comparisons of maps showing concentrations of poverty and the absence of available childcare – over the entire country, with over 2.2 million data points crunched. The map is a project by The Center for American Progress and powered by Mapbox.
In addition to seeing concentrations of poverty side by side with childcare availability, you can drill down and visualize by educational attainment, demographics (percent Black or Latino), and median income or housing value.
In just a short time browsing, I was able to see interesting correlations and divergences – not every poor area has a dire lack of childcare, but many do in ways that are painfully obvious with this map. What do poor areas that do have good access to childcare have that others lack? There are many other questions to test here.
