Advancing Equity through Data: A New Tool from Corporation for Supportive Housing

Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH) CSH developed a Racial Disparities and Disproportionality Index (“RDDI”) that looks at 16 unique systems and measures whether a racial and/or ethnic group’s representation in a particular public system is proportionate to, over or below their representation in the overall population (proportionality) and also allows for the examination of systematic differences between groups and geographies (disparities). The RDDI provides a standardized comparison between groups.

The RDDI also includes a critical element distinguishing it from other standard indices. Whereas most other indices use white populations as the baseline comparison group for all other racial and ethnic groups (e.g., black rates / white rates; Native American rates / white rates, etc.), CSH’s index compares each group to the aggregation of all other groups, and in effect de-centers “whiteness” as the standard from which all other groups are measured.

CSH’s Index can be viewed as the “likelihood of one group experiencing an event, compared to the likelihood of another group experiencing that same event.” By default, the RDDI shows each system’s equity index as part of a stacked bar chart, organized by state. This can be broadly interpreted to show the cumulative disparity on a state by state basis, where larger portions of each stacked bar point to the primary drivers toward each state’s cumulative total.