CPAR Expands Data Offerings with an Interactive Dashboard on Poverty in Nebraska

Since 2009, CPACS, with the Center for Public Affairs Research as the primary contact, has partnered with the Nebraska Legislative Planning Committee to develop a database that consists of data for each of nine categories of benchmarks that present a common-sense and data-driven assessment of key areas important to Nebraskans' quality of life. To learn more about this partnership and database read “CPAR Partners with Nebraska Legislative Planning Committee to Assist with Long-term State Planning.”

Since the 2012 Legislative Session, the Committee has received a series of printed documents that includes the database, affiliated reports, and policy briefs.

To improve access to this information CPAR is developing a series of interactive dashboards that allow users to explore the data through the manipulation of charts and maps.

The first dashboard released to the public is “A Demographic Portrait of Poverty in Nebraska.” The dashboard presents poverty data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey for three population groups—persons in poverty; children under 18 years in poverty; and family households with female householders, no husband present, with related children under 18 years, in poverty—and for a variety of geographies.

The dashboard includes the following series of interactive charts and maps.

• Poverty Rates for States and the United States: 2005-2015—a time series chart comparing poverty rate trends among up to seven states and the country.
• Poverty Rates Ranking for States: 2005-2015—a bar chart ranking states, DC, and the country by poverty rates.
• Poverty Rates for Nebraska Counties: 2008-2012 to 2011-2015—a thematic map showing rates of poverty for counties.
• Poverty Rates for Nebraska County Census Tracts: 2008-2012 to 2011-2015—a thematic map showing rates of poverty for census tracts in Douglas, Sarpy, Lancaster, and Hall counties.
• Poverty Rates of Census Tracts in Nebraska compared to 2008-2012: 2008-2012 to 2011-2015—a bar chart showing the change in poverty rates over time for census tracts in Douglas, Sarpy, Lancaster, and Hall counties.
• Poverty Rates of Census Tracts in Nebraska compared to 2008-2012: 2008-2012 to 2011-2015—a line chart showing the change in poverty rates over time for census tracts in Douglas, Sarpy, Lancaster, and Hall counties.
• Poverty Rates for Nebraska Legislative Districts: 2008-2012 to 2011-2015—a bar chart ranking districts by poverty rates.

Users can interact with the data by selecting the population group, geographic area, and/or time period of the data they wish to view. Users can isolate specific subsets of data to view, zoom in and out of the chart, and use the tool tip to get more information on data points. Users also can download charts in a variety of formats, download the data as a text file, or download the entire workbook for further manipulation in Tableau.

At present, the dashboard includes data through the 2011-2015 American Community Survey but will be updated when new ACS data are released.

The poverty dashboard was created in Tableau by Anusha Kolasani while she was a graduate student in the Math Department as partial completion of an independent study class. Additional dashboards are being developed by other graduate students and CPAR staff members and will be released over the next year.