Researchers show Hamilton County a data dashboard to target place-based investments to close wealth gap

Wendy Ellis, director at the Institute for Racial, Ethnic and Socioeconomic Equity and a lead on the Closing the Wealth Gap study, presented a decade of community-based research and a live demonstration of an “Opportunity Dashboard” to the Hamilton County Commission on Feb. 18, 2025.

Ellis said the work grew from 10 years of neighborhood-level research that focused on Avondale and Riverside and that it is intended as a tactical implementation framework aligned with the mayor’s financial blueprint. "This is not a pie in the sky framework," Ellis said. "We understand, particularly in your position, what gets measured is what gets done."

The report and dashboard center on place-based investments in neighborhood resource hubs, access to financial services, workforce supports and policy tools such as debt management or guaranteed basic income. In a live demo, presenter Daniel Chen showed a $1,000,000 example that the tool split into $800,000 for after-school programs and $200,000 for workforce training and projected a 14% increase in kindergarten readiness and a 9% rise in labor-force participation over time.

"When you invest, we have to demonstrate what is the return on that investment," Ellis said. Daniel Chen, who worked on the dashboard model, described the current variable set as substantial: "We have about 3 to 500 total in terms of different arrays, but the actual input and output that directly matters is just about 100 typically." He and Ellis said the tool is customizable to local indicators and that the team seeks county and city feedback on which measures would be most useful.

Commissioner Alicia Reese pressed for clarity on scope and noted the county’s past use of one-time federal dollars, saying, "Childhood poverty national average is 16.3%. Hamilton County is at 22%. Cincinnati is up at 35.8%." Commissioners and presenters discussed aligning county and city investments, philanthropic partners and corporate investors so dollars already being spent are coordinated rather than siloed.

Ellis described the dashboard as intended for joint use by public and private partners for strategic allocation, forecasting and reporting. The team requested partnership from the county to finalize local indicators and to participate in a stakeholder meeting later in the spring.

Next steps the presenters offered include: tailoring the dashboard indicators to county priorities; refining measurement and predictive pathways with local data partners; and convening a public-private meeting in the spring to identify target neighborhoods and coordinate investment strategies. The presenters said they would return with a more formal invitation and materials for commissioners and staff.