The Racial Equity Index is a data tool designed to help communities identify priority areas for advancing racial equity, track progress over time, and set specific goals for closing racial gaps. It provides a snapshot of overall equity outcomes for cities, counties, regions, and states.
New to the Index? Start here to better understand how to use it.
The Index is based on nine Atlas indicators scored separately for inclusion and prosperity. The inclusion score measures racial disparities, where a higher score indicates smaller racial gaps. The prosperity score measures outcomes for the total population, where a higher score indicates better results overall. The index also provides prosperity scores by race/ethnicity for the six major racial/ethnic groups. The maximum possible index value is 100 (top performer) and the minimum possible value is 1 (needs most work). All values are derived in relative terms, so even the top performer has room for improvement. Because the index scores are calculated by geographic type, cities should only be compared with other cities, counties with counties, regions with regions, and states with states. Download the data and see the methodology.
Inclusion score
The inclusion score measures how a given geography is doing compared with its peers (cities, counties, regions, or states) in terms of racial gaps across all nine indicators included in the Racial Equity Index, considering six racial/ethnic groups: White, Black, Latino, Asian or Pacific Islander, Native American, and Mixed/other populations. The inclusion score provides a useful comparative overview of racial equity in a community; deeper disaggregation within these broad racial/ethnic categories can be found by viewing individual indicators in the National Equity Atlas. The minimum possible value is 1 (needs most work) while the highest is 100 (top performer). The inclusion score reflects only the relative magnitude of racial gaps across indicators, and not how the community is doing overall, which is measured by the prosperity score below.
Prosperity score
The prosperity score measures how a given geography is doing compared with its peers (cities, counties, regions, or states) in terms of overall population outcomes for the nine indicators included in the equity index. The minimum possible value is 1 (needs most work) while the highest is 100 (top performer). The prosperity score for the overall population reflects the level of prosperity across indicators for a community as a whole, and not how the community is doing in terms of racial gaps.
Prosperity scores are also reported for each major racial/ethnic group, and are comparable to the overall prosperity score in the community and between communities. Examining the prosperity score by race illuminates how different groups are faring relative to the communities as a whole across a variety of indicators. For an overall measure of racial equity gaps in the community, see the inclusion score above.