Representative Data

On May 7, 2024, the Brookings Institution published commentary on the federal government’s updates to standards for defining race and ethnic categories across government agencies. The commentary is quick to note that standards are still not perfect: Identifying information falls far short of inclusivity. 

In addition to learning about policy updates, the Brookings commentary is an important reminder of the challenges, nuances, and technicalities of representative data. 

Our Community Indicators dashboard uses Census data and data from New York State agencies, all of which have wrestled with these issues. As we note in the Community Indicators section, we know that the racial/ethnic categories may not feel like a direct representation of your racial/ethnic identity and, for some, may not feel empowering. We hope to make bigger strides toward more expansive and inclusive terminology.

New Jersey is Taking Bold Action against Exclusionary Zoning

Local planning boards do not tend to be a hot topic or trendy conversation starter, but they may be a key location for actual social change. 

The state of New Jersey has heard the call and, in March 2024, enacted legislation to require affordable housing in communities that have historically been exclusive. According to the write-up by NextCity, the new law will make it harder for wealthy towns in New Jersey to block new developments, and it provides incentives for building near transit, redeveloping underutilized structures, and targeting the neediest families (by income, IDEA requirements, etc.) in addition to tax incentives. 

Working Backwards for Social Issue Problem-Solving: Bill Gates on Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Social problems are complex and require a structured, rigorous approach to finding solutions. For example, ACT Rochester uses the ‘4 Cs’ as a guide to support systematized problem-solving. The more structured we are in addressing the complex issues, the more accurately we can diagnose a solution and build a persuasive story.

We start with the problem, working backwards to identify what we need to know and identify opportunities to intervene. It’s science. Tried and true.

In a recent episode on popular podcast Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard, Bill Gates discusses his rigorous approach to problem-solving in his work for the Gates Foundation. Early in the episode (a little over 14 and a half minutes in), Gates references his reliance on descriptive statistics for contextual understanding. He then makes a quick reference to the fact that his foundation sponsors autopsies on children in India so that they can be sure that they address leading causes of death. The interview doesn’t focus on this point, but it is worth underlining . Since the Gates Foundation is committed to saving lives, Gates and his team acknowledged that first they needed to understand what was taking lives. 

Consider this structured way of thinking. Identify a goal. Figure out root causes to identify interventions. Rinse. Repeat. 

Some Facts About Rental Housing

On the heels of sociologist Matthew Desmond’s visit to Rochester in March 2024, housing and renting circumstances are top of mind for poverty abolitionists. (See also Eviction Lab resources, but note that none of the counties in our region are included). 

In March 2024, the Brookings Institution published an article “Ten Economic Facts about Rental Housing” that provides important information about the average circumstances of renters. 

Reading articles like this provides some data about housing realities in Rochester, the full 8-county region, and nationwide. 

What story do you have about renters? What did you learn in this article that challenged your story?

The Pursuit of Improvement

In our last post, we shared a bit about the importance of pilot programs and the value of having an end point to analyze impact. Pilots are one example of using improvement science to find solutions and make changes.

Taking a wider view, pilots are often part of a commonly used approach called the Plan Do Study Act (PDSA) Cycle. Data is at the heart of every step in this systematic problem-solving model. It is essential for understanding the problem, identifying potential solutions, and determining whether these changes actually lead to improvement.

Learn more about how the PDSA Cycle works and how it can be applied to almost any improvement project and feel free to contact actrochester@racf.org for assistance.

Testing a Guaranteed Basic Income

In Rochester, one in four people live in poverty. Imagine how our community might change if everyone had enough money to cover living expenses, as well as enough to manage urgent or unexpected ones.

That’s part of what the City of Rochester is exploring in its 12-month Guaranteed Basic Income Pilot Program, which began in 2023. The idea is to see how a guaranteed payment of $500 per month will help residents who live at or below 185% of the federal poverty level. Payments are unconditional — participants do not have work requirements or restrictions on how to spend money. 

Other cities across the country are exploring similar programs to find ways to address poverty.

Pilot programs like these are valuable because they allow us to test novel approaches on a small scale in the real world. The key is that these projects last only for a prescribed period of time. Fears of failure and loss of funding can bring the temptation to let them go on indefinitely without analysis, but it is essential to stop and evaluate the data.

Rochester’s Guaranteed Basic Income Pilot made its first payments in October 2023. As the program unfolds over the coming months, city officials and their community partners will be examining its impacts. We will all have to stay tuned!

Who gets in to college, and why does it matter?

On July 26, 2023, Economists Raj Chetty of Harvard University and John Friedman of Brown University published a paper examining the impact of college admissions on upward mobility. They used admissions data, income tax records, and SAT/ACT test scores to study whether a change in admissions policies at the most prestigious colleges could increase socioeconomic diversity of US leaders.

Their work finds that current admissions policies perpetuate privilege, emphasizing legacy status, extracurricular activities, and athletics — all of which are biased toward affluence. The takeaway is that a change in policy toward a focus on other factors could improve socioeconomic diversity in accepted students and therefore improve upward mobility.

For a deeper dive, read the paper and check out this Brookings Insitute webinar.

The 74

The 74 is a nonprofit news organization specifically focused on US education. Per the website, their mission is to use “data, investigation, and expertise” in order to “lead an honest, fact-based conversation about how to give American students the skills, support and social mobility they deserve” and “to challenge the status quo, expose corruption and inequality, spotlight solutions, confront the impact of systemic racism, and champion the heroes bringing positive change to our schools.”

Articles from The 74 include a student’s perspective on financial aid in 2019, research analyses such as “4 Things Districts Should Do Right Now – Before the Fiscal Cliff,” school funding analysis by renowned scholars, and a study of school-family communication. 

Consider The 74 as a resource for education narratives. 

Curated Report: Common Ground Health “Spotlight: The Decline in Life Expectancy in the Finger Lakes Region, 2013-2021”

In December 2023, Common Ground Health published a report on the trends in life expectancy in our region. Life expectancy is widely regarded as an indicator of equity. In fact, the National Equity Atlas lists life expectancy as an indicator of race inequity. 

The Common Ground report highlights a decline in life expectancy of 3 years from 2013 to 2021, as well as the connection of racial and socioeconomic inequities to the life expectancy decline. Common Ground also points to drug overdose, homicide, heart disease, and COVID-19 as explanations for the decreased life expectancy in the region. 

Living Wage Calculator

A living wage is defined as the income that a full-time worker requires to cover or support the costs of their family’s basic needs where they live. It often exceeds the minimum wage, which is the lowest pay rate allowed by law, and the poverty wage, which is the minimum amount of pay that would put a worker below the poverty line.

The Living Wage Institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) created a living wage calculator to factor in the cost of basic needs in different localities. The calculator features geographically-specific costs for food, childcare, health care, housing, transportation, other basic needs – like clothing, personal care items, and broadband, among others – and taxes at the county, metro, and state levels for 12 different family types. 

What is the living wage where you live?

Impact: Measuring the Difference We Make

Impact is a buzzword, particularly in the nonprofit space. What is our impact? Are our programs having impact? The challenge is that “impact” means different things to different people, and social science has a strong opinion. Impact indicates causality and can only be determined through rigorous evaluation. 

An inherently empirical term, impact is the difference in a specific outcome resulting from a particular intervention versus the outcome that results without that intervention. You could think of it like a math problem:

(Outcome with Intervention) – (Outcome without Intervention) = Impact

We often hear of impact defined as an intervention’s results (without evaluation) or even as a measure of output, such as the number of meals served. The danger in the disassociation between impact and causality is that we are setting ourselves up to connect the wrong dots, coming to an inaccurate conclusion because we omitted the science.

As you plan future projects, consider the science behind impact and how you want to measure success. Remember: ACT Rochester is here to help! 

For technical assistance feel free to email actrochester@racf.org

Curated Op-Ed: Gentrification’s Roots in the Post-Industrial City

NextCity’s February 1, 2024, opinion editorial about the roots of gentrification uses the city of San Jose in the Silicon Valley as the setting for a story of business development and incumbent residents. Rochester is mentioned, along with Detroit, as the urban case trajectory to avoid, where economic collapse and population decline have plagued the city. 

The article is a great reference for the sociology of the post-industrial city and provides important historical information. 

Common Sense Reform for School Discipline from The Children’s Agenda

Local advocacy organization The Children’s Agenda published a brief on school discipline reform. Using statewide data, the brief highlights the relationship between restricting punitive disciplinary practices and improved student achievement and graduation rates. Based on their analysis, The Children’s Agenda recommends a concrete policy change: limiting suspensions to 20 days. 

Approachable and informative, the report uses both facts and figures to lay out the deficiencies of current policy and the inequities of suspensions and expulsions.  A particularly helpful table on page 11 illustrates how far behind New York State is on restricting early-grade suspensions compared to other states. According to the table, Ohio has a 10-day limit on suspensions, California has a 20-day limit, and Wisconsin has a 15-day limit. 

The Children’s Agenda brief urges us to face local (and regional) expulsion and suspension policies. It is also an opportunity to think about our communities and what it would take to make this policy change successful for children and our schools.

To learn more about the Solutions Not Suspensions bill in pursuit of the recommended reforms, go to https://www.solutionsnotsuspensionsny.org/sns-bill.

Social Capital

On a community level, we can use social capital to make sure that all social networks are engaged and that none are isolated. In this way, it becomes a key for advancing equity and economic mobility. Consider social networks… which networks are connected to resources, and which are isolated?

If we are intentional about identifying networks and isolated networks, unemployed or underemployed individuals can become connected and are then more likely to find job-training programs, mentors or new opportunities. Families can find quality after-school programs for their children or day programs for their elders or loved ones with special needs.

The Power in a Few Degrees of Separation

The idea behind six degrees of separation is that any two people on the planet can be connected to each other by six or fewer social connections. In our region, it can often feel more like two degrees of separation.

It’s like living in a giant small town, where everybody knows everybody else. But it is also where our networks of friends, colleagues, family – really anyone we have social interactions with – mobilize information and resources. Who we know and how resources circulate is how social capital intersects with upward mobility…

How to Swim in an Ocean of Data

This year, an estimated 147 zettabytes of data will be generated worldwide. To begin wrapping your mind around that, consider that a zettabyte is equal to a trillion gigabytes.

Having even a fraction of that information at our fingertips can either help or complicate decision-making, especially in public policy. 

Please consider these posts context and complimentary narrative to the zettabytes of data.