Source page: McKinsey & Company
Commentary
Think locally, act locally
Diversity & Inclusion | Inequality | North America
April 15, 2024 – The United States is a mosaic of small communities, but the majority of them display sizable disparities between residents of different racial and ethnic backgrounds. For example, nowhere do either Black or Latino residents experience even three-quarters of the average overall well-being of their White neighbors, though Latino–White disparities are slightly smaller. Senior partners Alberto Chaia, Lucy Pérez, Shelley Stewart, and coauthors find that the United States is not on pace to eliminate overall disparities for either Black or Latino residents over the next century. Because many of the barriers to progress for racial and historically underrepresented populations occur at the local level, solutions may need to be implemented locally, too. Click through the interactive to see more.
Interactive
To read the article, see “Mapping the road to prosperity and parity for Black and Latino residents across America,” March 15, 2024.
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Visual form
Two-slide US county choropleth map of Latino density and Latino-White parity.
Layout / body structure
The first map shows where Latino residents are concentrated by county, and the second map shifts to parity scores comparing Latino outcomes with White outcomes. Read the sequence as a place-based comparison: where people live first, then how outcomes differ in those same local geographies.
What is being compared
It compares county-level Latino population density with county-level Latino-White parity scores. The broader page connects those place-based patterns to racial and ethnic well-being gaps across US communities.
Measurement system
The density map uses percent of county population, with the embedded chart text giving a range from 0.1 percent to 98.2 percent. The parity view uses scores that compare Latino outcomes with White outcomes, and the article frames the gap in terms of overall well-being and years needed to close disparities.
Visible structure inside the graphic
Darker counties on the density map cluster heavily in the Southwest and Florida, marking higher Latino population shares. The parity-score map uses the same national county layout to show that much of the country falls short of parity rather than showing a single national average.
Main takeaway from the visual
The map makes the page’s local argument concrete: racial and ethnic disparities are not evenly distributed across the United States, so progress depends on understanding county and community patterns rather than only national averages.
Key standout values or extremes
More than two-thirds of Latinos live in the largest urban communities. The density scale ranges from 0.1 percent to 98.2 percent by county, and the chart text says progress toward closing Latino-White gaps could take 70 to 120 years depending on region.
Controls / sequence, when applicable
The reader moves from the population-density map to the parity-score map to compare presence and outcome gaps across the same county geography.
Companion media, when applicable
There is no separate companion audio or video; the map sequence is the full visual on this page.