We are a group of three Minerva University undergraduate students (An Nguyen, Tim Podkopayev, and Koosha Azim) interested in wealth inequality and other economic phenomena impacting our global lives. We created this interactive tool to apply what we learned about measuring inequality in our IL181.008 - Quantitative Analysis Of Income, Inequality, And Intergenerational Mobility class.
This project is an interactive data visualization tool designed to explore homeownership inequality across the United States from 1978 to 2023. Using choropleth maps and interactive filters, the tool highlights disparities in wealth distribution across income groups and regions.
- Make wealth inequality data accessible through visual storytelling.
- Analyze trends in homeownership over five decades.
- Compare homeownership rates among income groups to highlight disparities.
- Facilitate data-driven discussions about housing inequality.
- Interactive Filters: Explore data across years and metrics with dynamic sliders and dropdown menus.
- Multiple Metrics: Visualize both absolute homeownership rates and relative inequality ratios.
- Regional Insights: State-level granularity to understand geographic disparities.
- Explanatory Context: Accompanied by detailed insights to make the data accessible to non-experts.
- Policy Development: Support informed decisions on housing policies.
- Educational Tool: Enable educators to teach concepts of economic inequality.
- Public Awareness: Raise awareness about wealth disparities in America.
- Community Empowerment: Help organizations identify local housing challenges.
This tool is designed for:
- Policymakers: To use data-driven insights for crafting housing policies.
- Students and Researchers: To explore long-term trends in wealth distribution.
- Community Organizations: To identify and address regional housing disparities.
- Concerned Citizens: To gain a clearer understanding of economic inequality.
The user-friendly interface ensures that even those without technical expertise can engage with the data. The tool also provides enough depth for basic academic or policy analysis, making it suitable for a wide audience.
The data is sourced from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) and includes summary statistics of homeownership at relevant income percentiles. The dataset spans 1978 to 2023, offering a long-term perspective on wealth inequality.
- Spanning 45 years for historical insights.
- Consistent measurement methods across states and time.
- State-level granularity for regional comparisons.
- Does not include within-state or city-level data.
- Focused on homeownership, which is only one aspect of wealth inequality.
- Five-year intervals may overlook short-term changes.
- Adding metropolitan-level data for finer geographic detail.
- Incorporating housing quality and property value metrics.
- Including racial and ethnic demographic data for comprehensive analysis.
- Expanding to include alternative wealth inequality indicators.
- Launch the interactive dashboard using Streamlit.
- Use the sidebar navigation to explore:
- About Us: Learn about the creators and their goals.
- About this Project: Understand the tool’s purpose and features.
- Who is this For?: Identify the target audience.
- Data: Dive into interactive visualizations.
- Select metrics and timeframes to explore data trends.
- Read the accompanying explanations to interpret the visualizations.
- Clone the repository to your local machine.
- Install dependencies using:
pip install -r requirements.txt
- Run the Streamlit app streamlit run app.py
- Open the dashboard in your browser at http://localhost:8501.