BERKELEY: While gaps still exist, Black-White parity is strongest in the areas of health coverage, children in single parent households, life expectancy, broadband access, and 8th grade reading levels, a new collection of data from UC Berkeley's Othering & Belonging Institute shows.
The Racial Disparities Dashboard, as we've called the project, includes data in almost 80 areas, including in education, criminal justice enforcement, employment, health, and much more. OBI researchers plan to add more measures to this unique resource as more data becomes available.
This updated resource only shows disparities as they stand based on the latest data, and does not show progress over time like the original 2023 release does. But it is now the most comprehensive repository of existing racial inequalities that is publicly available, with data on every issue that OBI researchers were able to obtain.
“No one has done anything like this anywhere before,” says Stephen Menendian, OBI Assistant Director and project lead. “It’s a one-stop shop repository for disparity data for researchers, policymakers, or simply concerned citizens.”
The issue where the disparity is widest is the racial wealth gap, which is a finding OBI highlighted in the original launch of the Dashboard two years ago. As of 2019, the average wealth accumulation for white people was $188,200, versus $24,100 for Black people, a staggering disparity of 681 percent.
The dashboard does not attempt to explain why disparities exist in these different areas for which we have data. The data is merely organized in a way to reveal where the most pressing issues persist.
Other research from OBI has pointed to structural dimensions to contextualize racial disparities. But each issue in the Dashboard will need to be examined to uncover the reasons behind the disparity (or parity), or why some areas have become more or less equitable than others over time.
The original list of 15 disparities OBI launched in 2023 is still accessible on a new "Progress Report Card" page, with plans to add more comparison periods and racial groups in the future. A demo video showing users how to use the report card page can be viewed here.
The research team behind this dashboard is currently working on applying the disparity methodology to indicators to assess disparities at the municipal level.
Media Contact
Marc Abizeid
marcabizeid@berkeley.edu
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