This Children’s Opportunity Index (COI) data package includes three data files:
The advantage of time-comparable COIs is that they facilitate a view of a Census tract’s change in relative opportunity between the two time points. The advantage of the COI plus (2017-only) is that it includes more underlying data about children’s opportunity than the time-comparable COI, which was restricted such that the same data had to be available for both time points. The 2017 COI plus index may therefore may be a better overall representation of opportunity, but does not offer a time comparison. Please see the COI report for additional details.
The table near the bottom of this page gives basic descriptions of the fields in the COI data files. “Domain scores” are representative of the degree of opportunity for a tract or zip-code area with respect to the specifically named domain. The domain scores are standardized such that they all have a mean of zero and a standard deviation of one. The “Overall Children’s Opportunity Index” value is a calculated from the domain scores—the domain scores are transformed (described in the included report) and their unweighted mean, rescaled to range from zero to 100, is the overall COI that represents overall children’s opportunity for the area. All variables are directed such that higher values refer to higher levels of opportunity.
| Variable | Description |
|---|---|
| tract | Census tract identifier |
| d_family_stability | Scores for the family stability domain |
| d_infant_health | Scores for the infant health domain |
| d_childrens_health | Scores for the children’s health domain |
| d_housing | Scores for the housing domain |
| d_access | Scores for the access domain |
| d_education | Scores for the education domain |
| d_environment | Scores for the environment domain |
| d_crime | Scores for the crime domain |
| coi_14 | Overall Children’s Opportunity Index (year 2014) |
| coi_17 | Overall Children’s Opportunity Index (year 2017) |
| coi_plus_17 | Overall Children’s Opportunity Index (year 2017), augmented with additional underlying data |