Revealing the hidden value of the care economy
Care work—raising children, supporting aging parents, caring for people with disabilities—keeps the US economy running. But it was invisible in official statistics, overlooked in policy, and absent from economic conversations that shape people’s lives. Researchers at the University of Kansas (KU) wanted to change that.
They compiled decades of data proving care work's economic value - $16.1bn per day to be precise. But the evidence was trapped in academic papers and spreadsheets, inaccessible to policy-makers, other researchers, and community advocates.
The researchers wanted to create the definitive source on the care economy, educate policy-makers, and bring care work into mainstream conversation.
“It started as a seed idea in my head, but together we have built something I could not be prouder to call ours. The Darkhorse team brought immeasurable talent, passion, and determination to make this project a success.”
Misty Heggeness, Principal Investigator
One platform for education and engagement
We created thecareboard.org, an interactive platform which goes beyond aggregating data to tell a story, invite exploration, and drive conversation.
Following our data hero framework, the platform opens with an engaging explanation of why the care economy matters, designed to draw in the researchers’ target audiences. It then invites deeper exploration into which populations deliver the most care and how they compare across state geographies, so users can discover and build trust in the insights which matter to them.
We drove engagement by making insights shareable at the click of a button - so findings could travel beyond the platform and spark conversation to drive broader understanding and action. And to ensure the work served as a foundation for what comes next, we built in transparent access to the methodology, code, and data for enabling other researchers to validate, build on, and extend the analysis.
The Impact
18%
increase in Care Economy related searches
171
citations
in launch year
3,755
users
in first six months
Media Coverage
The Care Board turned overlooked statistics into a national conversation about the value of care. Get in touch to make your data’s story as clear, compelling, and impossible to ignore.
Want to see more?
Explore more of our data visualization solutions that transform information into insight.