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These are the best new articles, videos, podcasts, and other resources we have found to teach poverty and inequality. They bring economics to life by showing students real-life examples and current events.
 

News Articles

(Listed from most recent to oldest)

How Africa’s ‘ticket’ to prosperity fueled a debt bomb | Reuters (Aug. 1, 2024)
Credit ratings meant to unlock investment have locked many poor African countries into extraordinarily high debt payments.

Equality eludes South Africa 30 years after apartheid | Reuters (May 22, 2024)
Sustained economic growth eludes South Africa even as it has spent 30 years trying to shake extractive institutions. GDP per capita is falling. Overall unemployment is almost ⅓ of the labor force and diverges significantly based on race.

Do we really live in an “age of inequality”? | Vox (Jan. 11, 2024)
How much has income inequality increased since 1960? And how do methodological assumptions about tax data impact measuring income inequality in the US?

It's one of the biggest experiments in fighting global poverty. Now the results are in | NPR (Dec. 7, 2023)
Recipients of universal lump-sum payments in Kenya fared better than recipients who received guaranteed monthly payments over 2 or 10 years. Also available as a podcast.

The Great Convergence | Foreign Affairs (Jun. 14, 2023)
Milanovic, well known for his work on the Elephant Graph, details the ways in which global incomes are converging while national income disparities are diverging.

Pandemic and War Reversed Decades of Global Poverty Reduction: World Bank | Time (Oct. 5, 2022)
The pandemic, along with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine pushed 70 million people into extreme poverty.

Africa’s Rapid Economic Growth Hasn’t Fully Closed Income Gaps | IMF (September 21, 2022)
Many economies in Sub-Saharan Africa have experienced fast growth during the last 20 years. Economists also estimate regional inequality declined in sub-Saharan Africa based on an analysis of nighttime satellite imagery.

Inflation inequality: Poorest Americans are hit hardest by soaring prices on necessities | The Conversation (January 13, 2022)
Inflation disproportionately affects lower income groups, and by this author’s estimates that gap widened in 2021.

Are you in the global middle class (interactive) | Washington Post (August 18, 2018)
Fantastic interactive, reminding, or in some cases informing, students how lucky/privileged most of us in the US really are.
Resource: Worksheet

Graphics

Measuring global poverty in an unequal world | OurWorldInData
It is not easy to measure the extent of poverty and to compare it across countries. However, this page contains a great graph showing the difference between absolute and relative poverty.

Charted: The World’s Working Poor, Over 30 Years | Visual Capitalist
Over the last 30 years, working persons living in extreme poverty have decreased by 584 million persons. Unfortunately, the working poverty rate remains prominent in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Charting Income Distributions in 16 Different Countries | Visual Capitalist
This graphic allows you to select an income, and compare where you would fall in the income distribution in 16 different countries.

Visualizing Global Income Distribution Over 200 Years | Visual Capitalist
One way to see how the world’s population has gotten richer over the last 200 years is to compare these three bell curves showing global income distribution in 1800, 1975, and 2015.

Interactive: Visualizing the Poverty Rate of Each U.S. State | Visual Capitalist
How has the poverty level in your state changed from 2008-2017? How does it compare to the national average?

Videos

Why is it so hard to escape poverty? | TedEd
Imagine that you finally get a job after being unemployed for months. Can you be penalized for working? Watch the video and find out. This video provides a great introduction to the welfare trap, one of the many poverty traps, as well as some possible solutions.

Basic Facts of Wealth | MRU
In this video, students will see how staggering the differences are in the standard of living for three countries—the Central African Republic, Mexico, and the United States. How many grocery baskets of “stuff” can an average person in each country purchase per year? Pause the video along the way for students to guess at the number of baskets for each—they may be surprised!

Premature Deindustrialization | MRU
Premature deindustrialization, the phenomenon of developing countries failing to industrialize, was first popularized by Dani Rodrik, and has implications for global inequality if true. Tyler Cowen provides a primer on the concept.
Resource: Practice Questions

Why the U.S. should provide Universal Basic Income (UBI) | The Atlantic
Annie Lowrey, author of recent book on UBI, presents the argument for UBI.

Podcasts

The Universal Basic Income experiment in Kenya | NPR Planet Money
A study of UBI payments in Kenya evaluates the benefits of lump sum payments compared to regular monthly payments, and how recipients spend their money.

What to do about inequality | The Indicator
There’s quite a lot of talk about inequality these days, but what would mitigate it? The Indicator talks with Branko Milanovic about some current proposals and why they would or would not work. Fun fact - Branko Milanovic is also the creator of the elephant graph.
Resource: Worksheet

Additional Resources

Economic Inequality | Our World in Data

Using Big Data to Solve Economic and Social Problems | Opportunity Insights
Raj Chetty has created a ton of resources for teaching poverty and inequality using big data.

Data-Trend Game | Storyline
Play this data-trend game to see how extreme poverty has changed over time.

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