We are going to resist the urge to identify them and use our preconceptions against them. Let’s dig deeper instead. Some groups are more exposed to the risk of poverty. Let’s see what happens when we split the data by sex:
How do you read this? For each sex, at the top you have the national average and at the bottom you have the group value. If the group has a lower risk, the line points to the left; otherwise, it points to the right. So, in this case the data shows very consistently that females have a higher risk of poverty or social exclusion than males.
Perhaps there are other factors. with higher variability. Let’s try age:
Lots of interesting stuff here: leaving your parents (16-24) is risky, while if you are 65 or over it can be heaven or it can be hell, depending on the country you live in. Let’s now add education:
As expected, there is a strong correlation between education level and risk of poverty. What about income and household type?
As you can see in the income, poor people run an extremely high risk of poverty (Monsieur de Lapalisse dixit). Explore the household type. Very interesting stuff too.
If you want to focus on the leaves only:
Here is the complete chart (click to enlarge):
Here is a comparison between two countries, Norway and Romania.
The bamboo chart: the bastard son of Mr. Slopegraph and Madame Parallel Coordinates. Do you like it? Do you find it useful? Confusing, perhaps? Do you know of a similar chart (link, please)?
How would you represent the same data? Here is the dataset (xls) for you to play.