From Data to Action: Neighbourhood Inequality Dashboard for Amsterdam Policymakers
This capstone project investigates inequality of opportunity in Amsterdam, examining how parental income shapes life outcomes across and within neighbourhoods. Using 53 indicators spanning education, health, housing, and income, the team mapped multidimensional neighbourhood inequalities to build a granular picture of where disadvantage concentrates and how it compounds across different domains of life. The project identifies a key limitation of existing data tools: most dashboards stop at diagnosis, presenting inequality as a pattern to observe rather than a problem to act on. For policymakers working under resource and political constraints, data alone is rarely enough to drive change.
To move beyond that limitation, the team developed an improved dashboard that connects neighbourhood-level inequality data to a curated database of recognised effective interventions, available resources, and political priorities. Rather than presenting findings in isolation, the tool is designed to help policymakers identify not just where inequality is most acute, but what has been shown to work and what is realistically available to address it. The result is a decision-support tool that bridges the gap between evidence and action, making inequality data more legible, more useful, and more likely to translate into targeted policy responses at the neighbourhood level.