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.
Chart 1 of 2 · Income tax
How much of the federal income tax does each income group pay?
The interactive chart needs JavaScript. The numbers are on the chart's page.
In tax year 2023, the 1% of tax returns with the highest incomes paid 38.4% of all federal income tax, the next 9% paid 32.1%, the next 40% paid 26.2% and the bottom 50% paid 3.3%. In tax year 2023, the top 1% reported 20.6% of all income and the bottom 50% reported 12.3%. Groups are tax returns ranked by adjusted gross income, leaving out returns of people claimed as someone's dependent; in 2023 the top 1% started at $675,602 of income and the top half at $53,801. Income tax here is what returns owed after credits, never below zero; refundable credits paid out as refunds and payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare aren't counted. IRS figures are estimates from a sample of returns and come out about two years after the tax year.
Questions to discuss
- In one sentence of your own, what does this chart show?
- Find the biggest change or difference in the chart. What might explain it?
- Who collected these numbers, and how recent are they? What else would you want to know before drawing a conclusion?
Source: IRS Statistics of Income, Table 4.1 (individual returns by income percentile) (Public domain (U.S. government work)) · Data as of Dec 31, 2023
Open the chart and its numbersChart 2 of 2 · World
How has the world's population grown since 1960?
The interactive chart needs JavaScript. The numbers are on the chart's page.
The world had 8.22 billion people in 2025, about 2.7 times the 3.02 billion of 1960. It passed 8 billion in 2023. Figures are mid-year estimates from the United Nations, which revises them as new censuses come in.
How to read this chart
Each point is the number of people alive in the world in the middle of that year, estimated by the United Nations. The axis starts at zero, so the height of the line shows the true size. Look at how steep the line is to see how fast the population grew.
Questions to discuss
- Judging from the chart, about how many years did it take the world to add its most recent billion people?
- Is the line getting steeper or flatter in recent years? What does that tell you about the growth rate?
- These numbers are estimates that the UN revises. Why is it hard to count every person on Earth?
Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators: Population, total (CC BY 4.0 (credit the World Bank)) · Data as of Dec 31, 2025
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