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. How has crime changed in your state since 1985?
  2. How is U.S. household wealth divided?

Chart 1 of 2 · Crime

How has crime changed in your state since 1985?

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

Choose any state to see its violent and property crime rates each year since 1985, next to the U.S. rate, as police reported them to the FBI. It opens with California: police there reported about 435 violent crimes per 100,000 people in 2025, against a peak of 1,121 in 1992. A state's year is left out when police departments covering fewer than 3 in 4 of its people reported a full year, as in California and many other states in 2021, when the FBI took only reports from its newer system (NIBRS) and many departments hadn't switched. Rates count only the agencies that reported.

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: FBI Crime Data Explorer, Uniform Crime Reporting Program (Public domain (U.S. government work); source FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program) · Data as of Dec 31, 2025

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Chart 2 of 2 · Wealth

How is U.S. household wealth divided?

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

At the end of June 2026, the wealthiest 1% of U.S. households held 32.5% of all household wealth, the next 9% held 36.4%, the next 40% held 28.8% and the bottom 50% held 2.3%. In 1989 the shares were 22.8%, 38.0%, 35.7% and 3.5%. 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). 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.

How to read this chart

Each bar is one group of U.S. households' share of all household wealth, so the four bars add up to 100%. The groups are different sizes: the top 1% is one household in every hundred, while the bottom 50% is half of all households. Compare each group's share of wealth with its share of households.

Questions to discuss

  1. Which group holds the largest share of wealth? Is it the group with the most households?
  2. If wealth were split evenly, what share would the bottom 50% hold? How far is the chart from that?
  3. The takeaway gives the 1989 shares too. Which groups gained a share since then, and which lost one?

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

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