The unemployment rate is low. But the big, national numbers don't tell the whole story. This Friday Factday looks at county-level variation by race, as well as labor force participation rates, education and trends over time.
The term "gerrymander" was originally coined by a political cartoonist to describe the salamander-shaped electoral districts drawn by the political party colleagues of Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry in 1812. The word is an amalgamation of the words "Gerry" and "salamander," and it describes the way politicians divide geographic areas into voting districts that give one [...]
Participation trends in the last two general election cycles are positive. More of us are registering, and more importantly, more of us are voting, though still at different rates depending on who we are demographically and economically. The Census Bureau released, just this week, data detailing a national level comparison in voting in the [...]
How do local governments decide where to invest public funds? Better yet, how can local governments help ensure that these investments are distributed to projects in an equitable manner? Unfortunately, there is no single, easy answer. However, the Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) has created an interactive equity analysis tool to help address these questions. [...]
Now in its sixth year, the Atlanta Regional Commission’s Metro Atlanta Speaks survey offers a snapshot of residents’ viewpoints on the area’s top challenges, local assets and what matters most to them. The survey polls residents from 13 metro counties on questions about transportation, the economy, amenities and quality of life, civic engagement and [...]
Opportunity varies widely across our country. Where one grows up, the income of their parents, their race and ethnicity -- all of these factors can contribute to a person's economic prospects and potential social mobility as an adult. Researchers from Harvard, Brown, and the U.S. Census Bureau have attempted to measure the extent to which [...]
ESRI's diversity index provides an estimate of how likely two people, selected at random from the same geographic area, will belong to different racial or ethnic groups. Available down to the block group level, an index value of 0 means an area exhibits "no diversity" and 100 means that there is "complete diversity." The [...]
The deadline to register to vote in the 2018 General Election in Georgia is Tuesday, October 9, 2018. With this deadline on the horizon, we thought it a good time to take a closer look at who votes in the Atlanta metro region. Using data on voter registration and voter turnout from the last [...]
The story map below represents the capstone work of Matt Leonard, a recent graduate of the MS-Geographic Information Science & Technology (GIST) program at Georgia Tech and Research & Analytics Intern at the Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC). It provides an illuminating glimpse at how Atlanta's built environment and human landscape was shaped in large [...]
