Opportunity Index User Guide

This guide is available to help individuals better understand how opportunity in their community is determined and distributed, and how to put this knowledge to use. The guide will allow users to navigate the Opportunity Index, and will help donors, community members, policymakers, and researchers make data-driven decisions about where and how to widen opportunity and reduce disparities in their communities.

The Opportunity Index compiles and analyzes timely and critical national, state, and county-level data so that communities can build opportunity. Individuals, families, communities, and governments all influence access to opportunity and well-being, and improvement efforts can occur simultaneously at all levels, making measuring opportunity a difficult task. To track successes and challenges and illuminate context, communities need tools like the Opportunity Index that provide credible and compelling data. Identifying key leverage points and inequities can put communities on a path to open doors for more people and improve outcomes.