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 3 · Income and poverty
What share of people live in poverty in your county?
The interactive chart needs JavaScript. The numbers are on the chart's page.
Search any of the 3,144 U.S. counties. In the Census Bureau's five-year survey ending in 2024, Oglala Lakota County, South Dakota had the highest share of people below the official poverty line, 57.6%, and Morgan County, Utah the lowest, 1.4%. The poverty line is the same across the country, so it doesn't reflect higher living costs in some places, and small counties' estimates have wide margins of error.
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: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates (Public domain (U.S. government work). This product uses the Census Bureau Data API but is not endorsed or certified by the Census Bureau.) · Data as of Dec 31, 2024
Open the chart and its numbersChart 2 of 3 · Health
How long do Americans live, and how has that changed since 1900?
The interactive chart needs JavaScript. The numbers are on the chart's page.
A baby born in the US in 2018 could expect to live 78.7 years, up from 47.3 in 1900. The sharpest drop was in 1918, to 39.1 years, during the influenza pandemic. This CDC dataset stops at 2018; later NCHS reports put life expectancy at 78.4 years in 2023 and 79.0 in 2024, after a fall during the COVID-19 pandemic.
How to read this chart
Each point is how long a baby born in that year could expect to live, if death rates stayed as they were that year. It is an average, so it is pulled down a lot when many babies and young people die. Hover or tap a point to read its year and value.
Questions to discuss
- Find the sharpest drop on the chart. What happened in the world that year?
- Life expectancy in 1900 was under 50. Does that mean most adults died in their 40s? What else could lower the average?
- What changes in medicine, food or public health could explain the long rise?
Source: CDC National Center for Health Statistics, Death rates and life expectancy at birth (Public domain (U.S. government work)) · Data as of Dec 31, 2018
Open the chart and its numbersChart 3 of 3 · World
How fast has the world come online?
The interactive chart needs JavaScript. The numbers are on the chart's page.
73.6% of the world's people used the internet in 2025, up from 15.6% in 2005, the first year the World Bank gives a world figure. It counts people who used the internet at least once in the previous three months. The world figures are estimates by the International Telecommunication Union.
How to read this chart
Each point is the share of the world's people who used the internet at least once in the previous three months, as estimated by the International Telecommunication Union. The axis starts at zero, so the height shows the true share. The steeper the line, the faster people were coming online.
Questions to discuss
- About what share of the world was online in the first year on the chart, and in the latest year?
- Did the share grow faster in some years than others? What could have sped it up?
- Using the internet once in three months counts here. What does this number leave out about how people get online?
Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators: Individuals using the Internet (% of population) (CC BY 4.0 (credit the World Bank)) · Data as of Dec 31, 2025
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