Overview:

Our long-term project goal is to provide communities with opportunities to extract data insights, develop capacity to meet their current needs and prepare for the future. Guided by the Community Capitals framework, we investigated “Political Capital” by conducting an extensive literature review to uncover policy domains that have potential to impact economic mobility. Domains we focused on: Employment, Voting, Housing & Zoning, Education, Policing, and Taxation. Within each, we collected data on policies and laws for Virginia, Iowa, and Oregon. We created an interactive dashboard that allows users to see visualizations of the data and explore by domain and state.

Teaser Video:

Research Project Webpage:

Click here for more details about the project including findings, data, and methods.

Fellows:

Lara Haase

Lara Haase

Carnegie Mellon University, MS in Public Policy and Management – Data Analytics
 
 
 
 

Interns:

Vatsala Ramanan

Vatsala Ramanan

Smith College, Quantitative Economics
 
 
 
 

Martha Czernuszenko

Martha Czernuszenko

The University of Texas at Austin, Information Systems & Canfield Business Honors Program
 
 
 
 

Riya Berry

Riya Berry

UC Berkeley, Data Science & Interdisciplinary Studies
 
 
 
 

Tasfia Chowdhury

Tasfia Chowdhury

Indiana University Bloomington, Major: Political Science
 
 
 
 

Mentors:

Vicki Lancaster

Principal Scientist, Biocomplexity Institute, University of Virginia

Cesar Montalvo

Research Associate, Biocomplexity Institute, University of Virginia

Stakeholders:

The Gates Foundation

Land Grant Universities - Cooperative Extension Program

  • Mike Lambur, Virginia Tech, Asso. Dir. of Program Dev. for VA Cooperative Extension Service
  • Cassandra J. Dorius, Iowa State U., Associate Prof of Human Development and Family Studies
  • Stuart Reitz, Oregon State University Professor and Director of the Malheur Experiment Station