Many measures in this section use American Community Survey (ACS) 2017-2021 5-year averages (and, where there is a longitudinal comparison with unspecified years, the “previous” value is the 2012-2016 5-year average). They also appear in the Kids Counts data center, where you can find detailed citations to the specific ACS tables used in the data center and in this website.

• Child poverty (the data by race are from ACS tables B17001A-I)
• Children under 5 in poverty
• Child poverty by family structure
• All age poverty by race
• Median family income by race
• Median family income for children with families
• Children in high -poverty communities
• High housing cost burden

Of the remaining Economic Justice measures, the sources are as follows:

• Unemployment rates by race are from the DC Department of Employment Services (DOES) annual reports from FY2020, FY2019 and 2017 (covering 2016 data), with 2021 data pulling from the DOES response to a data request. DOES shifted how they report unemployment from fiscal year to calendar year reporting, so we made that change as well.
• Youth unemployment rates are from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Expanded State Employment Status Demographic Data. The data pulled are specifically about the civilian workforce, though that is not specified in the body of this report.
• TANF enrollment numbers were provided by DC’s Department of Human Services.
• The count of homeless children is the “literally homeless” children number from the Metropolitan Washington Council of Government’s annual Homelessness in Metropolitan Washington: Results and Analysis from the Annual Point-in-Time (PIT) Count of Homeless Persons report.
• The counts of homeless students are from the Office of the State Superintendent’s Homeless Education Program Statistics & Reports annual count available at https://osse.dc.gov/page/homeless-education-program-statistics-reports. The count by ward was obtained by rolling up school-level counts of homeless students in school report card data to the ward level. Students who moved schools during the school year will be counted twice, which means the percentages of homeless students in each ward will not add up to 100%. In addition, because of concerns that the not all students experiencing homelessness were identified as such during the COVID-19 pandemic, we retained the 2018-19 numbers rather than exclusively using the newer numbers. For a broader comparison over time the 2013-14 number is from the National Center for Homeless Education’s Federal Data Summary.
• All Youth Counts data points are from the annual presentation (and accompanying data set) shared by The Community Partnership. Because of pandemic-related changes to the methodology for 2020 and 2021 Youth Counts we used the 2019 Youth Counts results in some places (as noted in the text).
• The data on the number and race of children in foster care pull from the Children and Family Services Agency’s data dashboard. The “previous” number was provided by CFSA.
• Summer Youth Employment Program numbers pull from the 2019 annual report and 2020 independent evaluation report.