Overview

The NYC Poverty Atlas brings together data and insights on poverty in New York City. It is built on the NYC Government Poverty Measure (also called the NYC Poverty Measure), the City’s official, charter-mandated benchmark for measuring poverty. The Atlas makes that benchmark data more accessible, actionable, and transparent, strengthening our ability to respond to poverty with precision. By transforming technical reports into an interactive, neighborhood-level platform that supports evidence-based decision-making, the NYC Poverty Atlas lets users see not only how many New Yorkers are in poverty, but who, where, why, and how public benefit programs alleviate poverty.

Target Audience

• City policymakers
• Administrators of public benefits programs
• Anti-poverty-focused community organizations
• City and academic poverty researchers
• NYC elected officials and appointees
• NYC residents interested in learning more about poverty in NYC

Project Website

povertyatlas.nyc.gov

Project Partners

The NYC Poverty Measure is calculated by NYC Opportunity’s Poverty Research Unit. To create the measure, the Poverty Research Unit partners and receives data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the New York State Department of Health, the New York State Office of Children and Family Services, the New York State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the New York City Department of Social Services, New York City Public Schools, and the New York City Department of Housing Preservation & Development.

Key Features

• Interactive Data Tool
  Create custom data visualizations to explore who is experiencing poverty in New York City, and where. Users can create graphs, charts, and maps using different poverty thresholds, and can go deeper using demographic filters such as borough, age, race/ethnicity, neighborhood, disability status, and more.
• Narrative Findings with Detailed Data Viz
  Read the Poverty Research Unit’s breakdown of and deep dives into key poverty trends. Stories feature interactive data visualizations to illustrate these findings.
• Methodology
  Understand what makes the NYC Poverty Measure unique, how it’s calculated, and access technical documentation.

How We Created the NYC Poverty Atlas

The NYC Poverty Atlas is a continuation of our digital and physical Poverty Reports. These reports are produced by the NYC Opportunity’s Poverty Research Unit. Our partners at Insomniac Design provided development services.

Technology Powering the NYC Poverty Atlas

The NYC Poverty Atlas is developed on Django, a python-based open-source platform, with a frontend supported by Next.Js and React JavaScript library. The application is hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS). The data visualizations are supported by Highcharts.

Contact Us

Get in touch with our team using our contact form.