About The Care Board Project

Care work—whether it’s raising children, supporting aging parents or individuals with disabilities—is a vital yet often overlooked part of the economy. Despite its essential role, care work remains underpaid, undervalued, and insufficiently measured in economic data. 

The Care Board is an interactive dashboard designed to quantify and highlight the economic contributions of care work. By compiling data from administrative sources and developing new statistics, our project provides policymakers, researchers, and advocates with the insights needed to better understand the care economy. 

Mission

Our mission is to use data to reveal the essential role of care in sustaining families, communities, workers, and the broader economy. The Care Board quantifies the economic contributions of care work, encompassing activities such as childcare, elder care, and domestic work both within households and in the formal labor market.  

Vision

We aim to transform how policymakers, researchers, media reporting, and nonprofit organizations analyze and integrate care work into economic discussions. The Care Board is a one-stop destination for comprehensive information on the care economy, offering insights that traditional economic data often overlook. 

Key Features

• Data Aggregation: The Care Board aggregates existing data on the care economy from various administrative sources, serving as a central hub for insights into the care economy. 
• Interactive Dashboard: Our user-friendly dashboard enables policymakers, researchers, media, and nonprofit organizations to explore trends and visualize statistics on the care economy.  
• New Statistics: In addition to compiling existing data, The Care Board generates new statistics, including the Gini Coefficient of Formal Care and the Care Ratio, to provide insights into the distribution of care work. 
• Inclusivity: The Care Board is designed to be accessible to everyone. However, we anticipate that it will be particularly valuable for policymakers, researchers, media, and nonprofit organizations.  

Explore the Dashboard 

The Care Board is now live. Start exploring data, discovering insights, and uncovering the role of care in the economy today. 

• For more information on how to use the dashboard, see our blog. 
• To access the data repository, visit our GitHub. 
• For data questions or general inquiries, contact careboard@ku.edu. 

• To cite The Care Board, please credit as follows: 

  Misty Heggeness, Joseph Bommarito, and Lucie Prewitt. The Care Board: Version 1.0 [dataset]. Lawrence, KS: Kansas Population Center, 2025. https://thecareboard.org.