Visualization and Visual Analytics

Assignment 3
Visualization Redesign

Visualization Chosen:
The source of this Visualization is an article, ‘Child Penalties Across Countries:Evidence and
Explanations’, printed in 2019 by H. Kleven, C. Landais, J. Posch, A. Steinhauer and J.
Zweimuller.The article was printed in The Economist on January 28th, 2019.

Audience of the visualization

The article focuses on the change in income of working women, before and after childbirth.With
this article the authors want to focus on the sudden dip in the income of women after childbirth.
The audience which they want to target via this article would be:
1. Woking women-They should be aware of this occurrence so that they can raise their
voices against it and plan accordingly.
2. Working men - Men who become parents should understand women’s stand after
childbirth and should support and help at home so so that women do not have to cut
down on their working hours resulting in a decreased income.They should also raise
their voices against this issue.
3. Employers - So that they understand the seriousness of this issue and build certain
policies which allow working mothers to balance their work hours and personal hours
such that she does not have to compromise on her income or the credibility of her work.
4. Policy makers of different countries - This article especially focuses on 6 different
countries.(Denmark,Sweden, US, Britain, Austria and Germany)
We can see that Germany and Austria are countries with the largest dip in the income of
women after childbirth Policy makers of countries(specially these countries) should pay
 attention to this loss in income which women face after childbirth and modify or make
new policies to tackle this problem.

Purpose of the design

The purpose of the visualization above, is to showcase the change in the income of
men and women before and after childbirth.

By the help of this visualization the authors would like the above mentioned audience to
realize how much women lose after childbirth. In order to look after their children they
end up reducing their work hours, changing jobs with less income to accommodate their
increased personal responsibility.The sole responsibility of this loss is taken by the
women. We would want men to realise this injustice and help women in equal measure
at home so that they are able focus on work as well.

The purpose of this design is also to make the policy makers of countries which see the
maximum decrease in women’s income after childbirth to make better policies for their
female employees such that they are able to balance their work and personal like
without losing on their income.

There are 6 line charts representing 6 countries and each of the chart has the following
features:

1. X-axis represents the number of years before and after childbirth.

a. The x- axis has a 0 mark in the middle which represents the year if
childbirth and on the left and right of this 0 mark we have years before and
after childbirth respectively.
2. On the y-axis we have the percent increase and decrease in income.
a. The y-axis also has a 0 mark which represents 0 % change in the
income.The points above the 0 mark are the increase % in income and the
scale below the 0 mark represents the %decrease in the income.
3. The chart showcases the change in salary for both men and women in the form
of two separate lines. The dark blue line represents the income of women and
the light blue line represents the income of men.
4. The visualization has 6 line charts with the same features(as mentioned above)
representing the income trend for men and women, before and after childbirth in
6 different countries.

3 things that are wrong with the Current Visualization

1. 6 different line charts do not give us a clear comparison between the countries at
a glance
 2. The scaling of the y-axis does not allow us to give us a clear measure of the
income since the origin is not at 0.
2.1. The scale chosen for both the axis is in multiples of 5 on the x axis and
multiples of 20 on the y axis thus we cannot know the exact measures.
2.2. Due to the chosen scale it is not very clear to see the difference between
the income after and before childbirth.
2.3. Using percentage change as a unit does not give a accurate measure of
the quantitative attribute that is income. In case the policy makers want
the actual numbers then it would be difficult for them to do so.
3. To compare how much women lose their income versus the change income of
men after childbirth, using line chart with similar hues is not a great idea since the
the gap between men and women’s income, and actual decrease in women’s
income after childbirth is not highlighted clearly.

Redesign with justifications of theredesign decisions.

I hope to redesign my chosen visualization for policy makers of an organization or a
country so that they are able to get quantitative data required for analysis via this graph.
With this point in mind I would like to make the following changes to the above
mentioned visualization:
1. It is important to get across the comparison of income trends across all 6
countries should be viewable at a single glance and six different line
charts for each country does not convey that clearly. Therefore I would like
to collectively show the income trends for all 6 countries in one graph. This
2.
3. graph could be a map highlighting the six countries or a single bar chart
with all the countries represented in it as a categorical attribute.
4. The second thing which I would like to redesign about this visualizations
is that in order for the policy makers to get the exact figures I would like to
represent the income attribute on a different scale. The scale should have
its origin at 0, with such a design it will be easy to follow the trend (rise
and fall of income) in the exact figures.
5. Instead of choosing line chart I would also represent the income via bar
charts since it gives a better comparative view when we want to compare
the income of men vs women ,
6. before and after childbirth.The wide gap can be better shown and
highlighted using bar chart.