Mapineq Link: Institutional policy and structural geospatial database
The Mapineq project focuses on the trends and drivers of intergenerational, educational, labour market and health inequalities across the life course, a core area of social, economic and policy research. A central aim of economic, social and health policy interventions is to diminish inequalities. In order to do so, we require an understanding of how inequalities may accumulate and how they are influenced by the structural and institutional context and policy implementation at the local, regional and national level. Policies differ in their nature, are implemented at various geographic levels, and can operate both to aggravate or diminish inequalities. This report introduces Phase 1 of the Mapineq Link geospatial social and economic policy database, a rich open-access database with API access that researchers can use to link a multitude of geo-linked policies to their own research projects
By Douglas Leasure, Melinda Mills, Sander Wagner & Florianne Verkroost
Mapineq Link improves existing databases by: (1) harmonising and blending multiple sources, (2) including geospatial indicators at the neighbourhood, city or regional level, (3) including geo-coded data to link to individual data; (4) better and broader subject coverage; (5) objective information; (6) bottom-up use of diverse data sources; (7) structural, socioeconomic, policy and environmental data; and, (8) an API.
Phase 1 of Mapineq Link contains ten thematic modules that can be used for standalone analyses or linked to individual-level data, with data covering structural and policy indicators for: (1) family, (2) education, (3) labour market and employment, (4) retirement and pension, (5) earnings and income, (6) migration and language, (7) housing, (8) health, (9) deprivation, poverty, crime; and, (10) demographics.
Mapineq Link has an API and online dashboard which allows: (1) public and policy-makers, accessible material, (2) researchers to query the database, (3) programmers and data scientists to retrieve data for specific geolocations or bespoke regions; (4) external web developers to easily integrate Mapineq data into their own interactive web applications. The Mapineq Link team is dedicated to FAIR principles to make our innovations Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable.