It's Equal Pay Day! How Close Are We to Pay Equity?

In the United States, women must work an average of 3 extra months each year to earn the same as men. Equal Pay Day, March 31, 2020, commemorates this wage gap by marking “how far into the year women must additionally work to earn what men earned in the previous year.” In other words, women, on average, must work 15 months to earn the income men earn in 12 months.

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Coronavirus Doesn’t Change Where College Students Get Counted in Census 2020

Everyone’s lives have been upended due to the novel coronavirus. You may be reading this from your home “office” (dining table, kitchen counter, your child’s fort…). You and others in your community also may have college students staying with you since classes have moved online. The coronavirus has also affected census operations, but one thing hasn’t changed—college students should be counted where they would have been residing on April 1.

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Health Data Users Gather to Share Resources

On Tuesday, March 10th, data users from universities, non-profit organizations, municipalities, and private consulting businesses joined CTData for its first Hartford Data Meetup of 2020. These Data Meetups are opportunities for data users around the state to share data resources, support each other in their work, and network with peers. Meetups happen on a quarterly basis and focus on a particular topic. The March Meetup focused on health data.

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EventsGuest User
2020 Census Begins Today: Official Forms Start Arriving in Mailboxes

Between Thursday, March 12 and Friday, March 20, Connecticut residents can expect to receive a Census notification in the mail. The official Census Bureau invitation, to be delivered by the U.S. Postal Service, will include detailed information on how to respond to the 2020 Census. Individuals responding submit one Census form listing everyone who lives in their household.

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Income in Connecticut: The Source Shapes the Story – Part II, Unemployment

This is the second piece of a four-part series about data literacy and critical data consumerism through the lens of economic prosperity. This post focuses on unemployment. You can read Part 1 about income here. We hope that through this series you will be reminded that we must all continue to be curious about the information we are presented with and work to be critical consumers of data in our everyday lives.

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Data Literacy: The Skills You Need for Data Success

When you hear the term “literacy,” your mind might immediately jump to phonics flashcards and handwriting worksheets. Or maybe you think of a financial literacy podcast you listen to for investing tips and retirement planning. But what about the term “data literacy”? Here at CTData, we believe data literacy is an important and accessible set of skills that every person needs to possess. 

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Your Data Search Simplified: CTData Launches New Website

It all begins with a question, a question that you think can be easily answered with data. You sit down at your computer, fueled by curiosity and ready to find your solution. Fast forward several hours, and you’ve stared at the monitor for so long you can feel your eyes melting. How can one question that seems so simple be so complicated to answer? You don’t need magic or a data fairy godparent, you just need the brand new CTDATA.ORG.

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CTData NewsGuest User
A Quicker Way to Find Connecticut Data: 2019 Town Profiles Released

When deciding what outfit to wear today, we check the weather. When we want to try a new restaurant, we check Yelp. When we want to see how well we slept last night (or how much coffee we’ll need this morning), we check our FitBit to see our sleep patterns. All of these decisions require one key component: data. Data informs decisions of all types. Whether you’re looking for a new place to move, need stats to strengthen your upcoming article, or want to understand the community’s needs that your organization serves, data can bridge the gap between a hunch and a strong, well-supported claim.

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Town & RegionalGuest User
Income in Connecticut: The Source Shapes the Story – A Series

Connecticut is a state with many facets. At first glance, Connecticut appears well-resourced and prosperous, having long been cited as one of the wealthiest states in the nation. Those of us that work in our local communities know that there is a more nuanced story behind this facade of wealth. Connecticut continues to rank in the top 3 states for the highest income inequality in the nation.

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Preparing for Census 2020: Resources You Can Use

With the 2020 decennial Census happening this Spring, it is important for communities to work together to make sure that everyone is counted. We rely on these dollars to support services and infrastructure within our communities. In fact, for every person not counted, Connecticut loses approximately $2,900 in funding to other states, as well as funding for important community services and infrastructure.

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4 Quick Tips for Engaging People with Data

Empowering people to engage with data is one of the largest challenges facing policymakers, businesses, and community and advocacy organizations. For many individuals, “data” can be an intimidating word that brings to mind an indecipherable spreadsheet or conjures up memories of high school algebra. To help data analysts in their mission, we’ve created the following four quick tips for engaging people with data.

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Differential Privacy: Assessing 2020 Concerns using 2010 Census Data

To help data users assess the impacts of differential privacy in their communities, CTData used the IPUMS joint data release to develop an interface to compare the original 2010 town-level data with what the 2010 town-level data would look like if differential privacy was applied.

To what extent did the original 2010 Census data change after differential privacy was applied? We’ll look at a few variables below as examples. You can see what these and other variables look like in your community by visiting CTData’s interactive online tool.

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CTData 2019 Annual Report

CTData celebrated a year of transition and growth in 2019. We launched innovative new data projects, welcomed three new staff members, and assumed the role of leading the Hartford Data Collaborative—an initiative centered on building an integrated data system across nonprofits and the city.

As the Connecticut Census State Data Center, we bolstered our outreach around Census 2020, culminating in a series of workshops at our annual conference in November that provided crucial insights into planning for the decennial count.

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Census 2020 Workshops for Nonprofits in January - Census starts in March

As 2020 begins, the fast-approaching decennial 2020 United States Census looms large. To increase awareness and understanding of the importance of the census to Connecticut, to explain precisely how it will work, and to seek the assistance of organizations in communities statewide, the Connecticut Community Nonprofit Alliance, Connecticut Council for Philanthropy and Connecticut Data Collaborative will be co-sponsoring a series of workshops for nonprofit organizations throughout January.

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