Race and Poverty in the United States

Author(s)

Susanne Morgan, Ithaca College

Learning Goals

Skill

After using this module, students will gain skills in:
Using software to access and analyze census data
To learn to identify variables and to read marginals, and a crosstab table percentaged
in two directions.
To give beginning practice writing about data.
To provide a brief homework assignment beginning to graphically illustrate data.
To use collaborative learning techniques.

Substance
To clarify common misperceptions about the racial distributions in the US population

Context for Use

This exercise was developed for use in a introductory sociology course. Students will use data to look at racial groups and income/poverty in the United States.

In this module, students will take a look at race and poverty in the United States in an attempt to determine the relationship between the two. Variables such as age and household type will be taken into consideration.

Teaching Notes and Tips

This activity uses a customized data set made from the 2005 Current Populations Survey and guides students through data manipulation using WebCHIP software found at DataCounts!. To open WebCHIP with the dataset for the activity, please see instructions and links in the exercise documents under teaching materials. For more information on how to use WebCHIP, see the How To section on DataCounts!