Curriculum Wealth & Income Inequality
Wealth & Income Inequality
How economists measure inequality, why it's grown, and the genuine debates over what - if anything - should be done about it.
- Income Inequality vs Wealth Inequality Why how much someone earns and how much someone owns are two different measures - and why wealth inequality is usually the larger gap. 📄 Read-aloud
- How the Gini Coefficient Measures Inequality The single number economists most often use to summarize how unequal an economy's income or wealth distribution is. 📄 Read-aloud
- The Wealth Gap and Homeownership Why owning a home has historically been the single largest driver of wealth for middle-class households - and what that means for people locked out of it. 📄 Read-aloud
- Intergenerational Mobility: Can You Out-Earn Your Parents? How economists measure the likelihood of moving to a different income level than the family someone grew up in - and why it varies so much by place. 📄 Read-aloud
- Wealth & Income Inequality: Checkpoint 1 Covers income vs wealth, the Gini coefficient, homeownership's role in the wealth gap, and intergenerational mobility. 5 questions
- Why Inequality Has Grown Since the 1980s The main economic forces most commonly cited for rising inequality in recent decades, and why economists still debate how much each one matters. 📄 Read-aloud
- Redistribution: Taxes, Transfers and the Debate How governments use taxes and transfer payments to reduce inequality after market income is already earned - and the core arguments over how far to go. 📄 Read-aloud
- Global Inequality Between Countries Why inequality within a country is only part of the picture - and how the gap between countries has changed over recent decades. 📄 Read-aloud
- Inequality and Economic Growth: Is There a Tradeoff? Whether reducing inequality helps or hurts overall economic growth - and why the honest answer is more complicated than either side of the debate usually admits. 📄 Read-aloud
- Wealth & Income Inequality: Checkpoint 2 Covers why inequality has risen since the 1980s, redistribution through taxes and transfers, global inequality, and the growth-inequality debate. 5 questions
- Measuring Poverty: Absolute vs. Relative Poverty Lines Two very different ways economists define who counts as poor, and why the choice between them changes the picture entirely. 📄 Read-aloud
- Inheritance and Intergenerational Wealth Transfer How wealth passed down between generations compounds existing gaps, separate from the income mobility a family experiences. 📄 Read-aloud
- The Racial Wealth Gap: An Economic Explanation A factual look at how large, measurable wealth gaps between racial groups formed, distinct from the income gap alone. 📄 Read-aloud
- Global Wealth Inequality How wealth, not just income, is distributed around the world - and why the picture looks even more concentrated than income alone. 📄 Read-aloud
- Wealth Taxes: How They Would Work and the Debate Around Them A wealth tax targets what people own rather than what they earn, raising thorny questions about valuation, enforcement, and economic effects. 📄 Read-aloud
- CEO Pay and the Rise of Executive Compensation CEO pay has grown far faster than typical worker pay over recent decades, driven largely by a shift toward compensating executives with company stock. 📄 Read-aloud
- Education and the Inequality Cycle Education can help people rise economically, but unequal access to quality schooling can also lock existing inequality in place across generations. 📄 Read-aloud
- The Top 1 Percent: Measuring Top Incomes How economists use tax records to measure the share of income going to the richest, what the long-run trends show, and the debates over measurement. 📄 Read-aloud
- Wealth Inequality in India How wealth is distributed in India, how it has changed since independence, and the role of land, gold, housing and business ownership. 📄 Read-aloud
- The Gender Wealth Gap Why women around the world own less wealth than men, from inheritance and land rights to earnings and care work, and how laws are changing. 📄 Read-aloud
- Land Inequality in India How farmland in India is divided among millions of tiny holdings and a few large ones, why land reform had mixed results, and why land matters so much for wealth. 📄 Read-aloud