The Covid-19 pandemic has impacted the lives of Connecticut residents in many ways, from introducing many workers to remote work to exacerbating the financial struggles of others. Last year, the U.S. Census Bureau announced that standard 2020 ACS 1-year estimates would not be released, as Covid-19 severely impacted the data collection process and ultimately resulted in estimates that did not meet the Census Bureau’s Statistical Data Quality Standards. The Census Bureau was able to work through data collection challenges this year and released ACS 2021 1-year estimates on September 15, 2022.
In this post, we analyze changes from pre-pandemic (2019 ACS 1-year estimates) to the most recent time frame of data we have (2021 ACS 1-year estimates) to explore the impact of the pandemic on Connecticut residents and workers.
As of March 2022, over 45 million residents in the United States had outstanding principal and interest balances on their federal student loans, with an average balance of $35,685 per borrower. The Census Bureau reports 156 million residents who have at least some college education, meaning nearly 3 in 10 (29%) who attended or are attending higher education have outstanding student debt. This results in a total of over $1.6 trillion in outstanding debt, not including balances from private loans. Note that 9% of these borrowers were unable to be categorized into one of the fifty states (these categories included Puerto Rico, District of Columbia, Other, and Not Reported).
This post will explore and further dive into the student loan portfolio data published by the U.S. Department of Education.
Data users - we are gearing up for the last quarter of 2022 with the Equity in Data Community of Practice! We have all learned a great deal together so far in 2022, and the planning team has come up with an exciting fall lineup.
If you are unfamiliar with Equity In Data Community Of Practice, we are a group of data users in Connecticut (mostly) supporting one another as we work toward integrating more equitable data practices. We focus on racial equity explicitly but not exclusively. Our group is a project of the Connecticut Data Collaborative.
This past spring Hartford Data Collaborative launched a Hartford Youth Researcher program to give youth within Hartford an opportunity to review, analyze, and report on data related to Youth Behavioral Health alongside staff from the Hartford Data Collaborative. As they continue their mission, Hartford Youth scholar researcher Nathaniel Gardner, inspired by his community, created a Hartford Youth Profile which captures the core characteristics and values of youth in Hartford. This data was created from sources retrieved from CTData, EdSight, and the US Census.
On August 16th, the U.S. Census Bureau released coverage estimates for housing units from the 2020 Post-Enumeration Survey (PES). These results provide insight into the accuracy of the 2020 Census counts of housing units(not to be confused with counts of people). The coverage estimates are provided nationally, by region and state, and by type of housing unit (e.g., single unit versus multiunit and owner- versus renter-occupied) and characteristics of the householder (e.g., race and ethnicity).
This blog post reviews key findings for housing unit coverage estimates nationally, and for Connecticut and other states.
On July 25th, the U.S. Census Bureau in collaboration with Harvard University released a new interactive data tool on young adult migration. The data tool tracks patterns of migration between all 741 commuting zones in the U.S. from childhood (measured at age 16) to young adulthood (measured at age 26), for individuals with a Social Security Number who were born in the U.S. between 1984 and 1992.
Migration patterns are provided for the full sample and disaggregated by parental income quintile and by four categories of race and ethnicity (Hispanic, non-Hispanic Asian, non-Hispanic Black, and non-Hispanic White).
In this blog post, we report some findings from the tool on migration patterns for Connecticut residents.
The Post-Secondary Employment Outcomes (PSEO) data are an experimental data product developed by the Census Bureau that provides earnings and employment outcomes for college and university graduates by degree level, degree major, and post-secondary institution. The data are generated by matching university transcript data from participating universities with a national database of jobs compiled by the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics Program (LEHD) at the Census Bureau.
On June 8th, the Hartford Data Collaborative (HDC) hosted its first Data Walk focused on data about youth engagement in Hartford. Earlier this spring, the Hartford Data Collaborative launched its inaugural cohort of Hartford Youth Researchers. HDC coordinators Kate Eikel and Geethika Fernando co-led the presentation of data with Hartford Youth Researchers Shian Earlington, Nicaury Espinoza, Nate Gardner, Winder Munoz, and Daniel White. Officials from the City of Hartford Department of Families, Children, Youth, and Recreation; the Mayor’s office; the Hartford Public Schools; the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving; and HDC community partners including Capital Workforce Partners, COMPASS Youth Collaborative, and Our Piece of the Pie, attended the presentation and engaged in a discussion about the findings afterwards.
This article, about a group of Trinity College students that took an 87-page legal document and turned it into easy-to-read graphics that the people most affected by this agreement might be able to understand and interact with, caught the attention of many. For our June session, we had guests who supported this intriguing data work talk with us about the process they used and what they learned. We hope you find this 60 minute discussion and presentation as useful as we did. And if you’d like to learn more, we hope you’ll join us at next month’s session of the Equity in Data Community of Practice.
CTData has been working hard to update our data and data projects to reflect the ACS 2020 data release, as well as other updated data. This month’s list includes the Connecticut SEOW Prevention Data Portal, The Women and Girls Data Platform, the Connecticut Evictions Map, and some of our data tables in Data by Topic.
Last month, over 40 data users joined together to learn from real-life examples of equitable data practice. We heard from four group members who have attended many of the sessions we have run in the last two years. The discussion was rich, here are some of the highlights.
Today, the Census Bureau released 2020 undercount and overcount rates by state from the Post-Enumeration Survey (PES). The PES measures the accuracy of the decennial census by surveying a sample of the population to estimate the proportion of people missed or counted erroneously during the census count.
AT CTData, a core part of our work centers around building data literacy skills. We incorporate data literacy into almost every aspect of our work and we have seen a few challenges that organizations face when it comes to data either:
May is Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month – a celebration of Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States. In Connecticut – according to the 2020 U.S. Census – the Asian/Pacific American population grew by 27.1% during the past decade, from 134,091 residents in 2010 to 170,459 in 2020.
On Thursday, April 21st, CTData and staff from its Hartford Data Collaborative welcomed its first class of Hartford Youth Researchers. The six youth—who range in age from 16-21-- will be reviewing, analyzing, and reporting on data related to Youth Behavioral Health alongside staff from the Hartford Data Collaborative. In the April workshop, Hartford Youth Researchers engaged in discussions about data literacy and identifying data for a Hartford Youth Profile that will provide the Hartford Data Collaborative and its city partners with insights on city youth and their needs.
Last month, we published our report on Connecticut’s eviction crisis. In this blog post, we dive deeper into the data and explore towns with the highest number of eviction filings in recent months, from January 2021 through February 2022.
In our Equity in Data Community of Practice, which has met almost monthly since June 2020, the topic of equitable and ethical demographic data collection (race and ethnicity, gender, ability, etc.) is one that we talk about often. It is a challenging issue for many of us. Last year, Jasmine Johnson, Program Associate for Evaluation and Learning at The Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies and co-author of the report More Than Numbers Resource: A Guide Towards Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, joined us to share the lessons they learned about improving demographic data collection. You can watch the video of the presentation and read more here!
As Connecticut’s State Data Center, we develop many tools and reports to help agencies and data users across Connecticut to understand their community. For many of these tools and reports, we disaggregate our analysis where possible — such as by geography, race/ethnicity, gender/sex, and age. We receive many questions about accessing town-level data for various topics, so we have compiled several of our data tools and reports below.
The Connecticut Data Collaborative (CTData), and the Hartford Data Collaborative (managed by staff from CTData), has been awarded an $80,000 grant for a new initiative, Behavioral Health Indicators for City Youth. Through this initiative, CTData will partner with state and city agencies and Hartford youth to develop and analyze data aimed at improving understanding of issues related to youth behavioral health, and lead to changes in youth programs and policies.
