Chart assignment

Charts to read and discuss

Read each chart, then answer its questions. Every chart shows its source and date; open it for a table of the numbers and the data to download.

  1. What share of U.S. wealth does the bottom half hold?
  2. How much has the US warmed since 1895?

Chart 1 of 2 · Wealth

What share of U.S. wealth does the bottom half hold?

The interactive chart needs JavaScript. The numbers are on the chart's page.

The less wealthy half of U.S. households held 2.3% of all household wealth in the second quarter of 2026, down from 3.5% in 1989. Their share fell to 0.4% at the end of 2010, after home prices dropped. Wealth here is net worth: what households own (homes, stocks and mutual funds, pensions and retirement accounts, private businesses, cars and other belongings, bank deposits) minus what they owe (mortgages, credit cards, student and car loans). Many households in this group owe nearly as much as they own. The Fed estimates each quarter by combining its Financial Accounts with its Survey of Consumer Finances, taken every three years, so the newest quarters are estimates that get revised.

Questions to discuss

  1. In one sentence of your own, what does this chart show?
  2. Find the biggest change or difference in the chart. What might explain it?
  3. Who collected these numbers, and how recent are they? What else would you want to know before drawing a conclusion?

Source: Federal Reserve Board, Distributional Financial Accounts (Public domain (Federal Reserve Board; cite the Board as the source)) · Data as of Jun 30, 2026

Open the chart and its numbers

Chart 2 of 2 · Climate

How much has the US warmed since 1895?

The interactive chart needs JavaScript. The numbers are on the chart's page.

The contiguous US averaged 54.6°F in 2025. The warmest year since records began in 1895 was 2024, at 55.5°F. Through 2025, the dashed trend line, the straight line that best fits every year, rose about 0.18°F a decade, or 2.3°F since 1895, and warming had sped up to about 0.5°F a decade since 1970. Alaska and Hawaii aren't included.

How to read this chart

Each point is one year's average temperature across the lower 48 states, in degrees Fahrenheit. The axis doesn't start at zero, so a small rise looks steep: read the numbers on the axis, not the height of the line. The dashed line is the trend, the straight line that best fits every year; single years bounce above and below it.

Questions to discuss

  1. Find the warmest and coolest years on the chart. How many degrees apart are they?
  2. Why might one year be much cooler than the year before, even while the trend line keeps rising?
  3. The axis doesn't start at zero here, but bar charts always do. Why is that fair for temperatures but not for bars?

Source: NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Climate at a Glance (Public domain (U.S. government work)) · Data as of Dec 31, 2025

Open the chart and its numbers

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