A new online tool has launched to provide the public and policymakers with easily accessible data about lifetime outcomes by neighborhood.

The U.S. Census Bureau shared the tool, the Opportunity Atlas, last week along with a study that provides further insights on the Opportunity Atlas data. The Opportunity Atlas is comprised of census data, allowing anyone to view earnings distributions, incarceration rates and other outcomes in adulthood by parental income, race and gender in any census tract.

The Opportunity Atlas is aimed at providing parents with information on neighborhoods, identifying neighborhood disinvestment and informing policymakers where and how they can target place-based interventions.

 “These estimates allow us to trace the roots of outcomes such as poverty and incarceration to the neighborhoods in which children grew up,” the Census Bureau shared in a press release.

We tested the Atlas, randomly selecting one Michigan census tract to see what information surfaced.

Here’s what we learned about a census tract in Lansing that covers the city's westside:

• The employment rate for children who grew up in this area is 75 percent.

• The average household income for all races and genders is $31,000, which falls below average. That number can change dramatically when filtering household income by race and gender. The inequities are particularly clear for children of color and girls.

• The incarceration rate for all residents is 1.8 percent, meaning 1.8 percent of children who grew up in this area were incarcerated at some point in their life.

• The data shows 26 percent of women who grew up in this area became mothers as teenagers.

• About 76 percent of people who grew up in this census tract still live in the metro area; 21 percent still live in the same census tract.

You can search and access this data and much more for any census tracts in your community.

The study shares the resounding message that where children grow up affects their long-term outcomes.

The study states in part, “Moving to a neighborhood that is just a mile or two away can change children's average earnings by several thousand dollars a year and have significant effects on a spectrum of other outcomes ranging from incarceration to teenage birth rates.”

CityLab interviewed Wendy Lewis Jackson, managing director for the Detroit Program at The Kresge Foundation, about the value of the tool. Jackson told CityLab the Opportunity Atlas could be leveraged to target interventions for children.

“The path to prosperity for Detroiters begins in neighborhoods,” Jackson told CityLab. “These are the places that can launch children and families on a trajectory of success or trap them in profound inequality.”

Want more?

Check out the Opportunity Atlas.

View the full report, The Opportunity Atlas: Mapping the Childhood Roots of Social Mobility.

Read the full article from CityLab.