For quite awhile, I’ve been accumulating resources documenting the growth in the United States in wealth and income inequality. I’ve been planning on using them to develop a simple lesson using some of them — both for my Theory of Knowledge class and for my Intermediate English class. I’ve got a few ideas, but thought I’d share the resources today and solicit suggestions from readers.

I was prompted to write this post today after reading Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times’ column titled “Our Banana Republic,” which certainly belongs on this list. Here’s an excerpt:

The richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24 percent of income, up from almost 9 percent in 1976. As Timothy Noah of Slate noted in an excellent series on inequality, the United States now arguably has a more unequal distribution of wealth than traditional banana republics like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana.

Resources to illustrate this kind of disparity on a world-wide basis can be found in two other “The Best…” lists:

The Best Sites That Show Statistics By Reducing The World & The U.S. To 100 People

The Best Sites For Learning About The World’s Different Cultures

You might also be interested in The Best Resources To Help Students Learn About Occupy Wall Street.

The sites on this list, though, are specifically related to the United States.

The lesson plans I’ve seen on the Web seem pretty involved and complicated, and I want to develop, or learn about, one that is much simpler. All suggestions are welcome, including ones about additional resources.

I’m dividing this list into two sections. The first one includes infographics that might be accessible to English Language Learners. The second part shares articles that would have to have portions modified to make them accessible.

Here are my choices for The Best Resources About Wealth & Income Inequality:

INFOGRAPHICS:

The Great Divergence In Pictures: A Visual Guide To Income Inequality is an incredible slideshow by Slate.

15 Mind-Blowing Facts About Wealth And Inequality In America is from The Business Insider.

Here are links to several infographics created by Visualizing Economics.

Superrich Americans Driving Income Inequality is from NPR.

Charting the Decline is an infographic from TIME Magazine.

It’s the Inequality, Stupid is from Mother Jones and has eleven infographics.

A History of Poverty is an animated world map showing where poverty (and prosperity) have been most present over the past two hundred years. You can narrow it down by continent or county, too. It’s from the Christian Aid charity. After showing it to students, it could create a wealth of question-asking opportunities.

15 Facts About U.S. Income Inequality That Everyone Should Know (CHARTS) comes from The Huffington Post.

ARTICLES THAT WOULD HAVE TO BE MODIFIED:

Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times’ column titled “Our Banana Republic.”

Slate’s series that goes along with the slideshow mentioned earlier, The United States of Inequality.

Income Inequality: Too Big to Ignore by Robert Frank in the New York Times.

Why Has America’s Income Inequality Skyrocketed? from The Atlantic.

Fast Track to Inequality by Bob Herbert in The New York Times.

Equality, a True Soul Food is a piece by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. It’s on income equality.

Malcolm Gladwell On Why Income Inequality is the Next Big Issue Facing America is an article and video.

Recently, filmmaker Michael Moore spoke to public sector workers protesting in Wisconsin and said, “”Just 400 Americans — 400 — have more wealth than half of all Americans combined.” I’m an admirer of Moore, but he can also be guilty sometimes of a little hyperbole. I did find it interesting today, though, to read that The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel actually investigated his claim pretty thoroughly. Here’s their last line:

We rate Moore’s statement True.

The income made by, and the taxes paid by, the rich, in one graph is a chart from Ezra Klein at The Washington Post.

The Opportunity Gap is an infographic from GOOD.

The BBC has an interactive chart builder that lets you compare Asian countries (and the U.S. and the U.K.) in terms of wealth, health, life expectancy, education and energy consumption.

(Not) spreading the wealth is a pretty impressive interactive infographic from The Washington Post.

As Income Gap Balloons, Is It Holding Back Growth? is from NPR.

Recession Study Finds Hispanics Hit the Hardest is from The New York Times.

The PBS News Hour has done a series of reports on wealth and income inequality:

Americans Facing More Inequality, More Debt and Now More Trouble? (you can see the video and its transcript at the link)

The Income Inequality Quiz

Land of the Free, Home of the Poor

What Americans think about income inequality in one graph is from The Washington Post.

Here are two articles I’m adding to this list that are definitely not accessible to ELL’s, but they have great information that could be used by a teacher:

Isolated, Vulnerable And Broke is a column from The New York Times.

Can the Middle Class Be Saved? is from The Atlantic.

IMF: Income inequality is bad for economic growth is from The Washington Post.

The Limping Middle Class is by Robert Reich and appeared in The New York Times.

Protesters Against Wall Street is from The New York Times.

Corporations Tailoring Product Lines To Reflect Growing Income Inequality is from The Huffington Post.

Notes on income inequality is from The Washington Post.

America’s ‘Primal Scream’ is by Nicholas Kristof at The New York Times.

Graph of the Day: An “Occupy Wall Street” Primer

“How Economic Inequality Harms Societies” is the title of a new TED Talk that I’ve embedded below:

How Economic Inequality Is (Literally) Making Us Sick is a new TIME Magazine article on a similar topic.

Public Opinion and the Occupy Movement is a fascinating interactive infographic from The New York Times. I’m also adding it to The Best Resources To Help Students Learn About Occupy Wall Street.

Does Inequality Make Us Unhappy? is by Jonah Lehrer at Wired.

The downward path of upward mobility is by Fareed Zakaria at The Washington Post.

Income Inequality Between High Earners and Low Earners is an infographic from Information Is Beautiful.

The Growing Wealth Gap is a CNN slideshow.

The 21 Most Unequal Cities in America is a slideshow from Business Insider.

Occupy Design has a variety of useful infographics.

The Guardian has published a very good animated video on income and wealth inequality in the United States. I’m embedding it below, but I’m not sure it will come through on an RSS Reader. If not, you’ll have to click through to the blog to see it.

A Generation Of Widening Inequality is a report from The California Budget Project.

We Are the 99.9% is by Paul Krugman at The New York Times.

Income inequality is increasing across much of the developed world, a trend that will continue unless governments move aggressively to arrest it, according to a report released Monday by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The Washington Post began an article with that sentence.

Her’s a video representation of the report:

The 1 Percent Club’s Misguided Protectors is a NY Times column that includes some good charts.

Inconvenient Income Inequality is from The New York Times.

On fairy tales about inequality is from The Economic Policy Institute.

The Great Economic Divide Makes Everyone Poorer is from The Fiscal Times.

Bill Moyers’ new show recently made its debut, and it looks like it’s going to be a winner. The first episode was on economic inequality. Here’s how it’s described:

Bill Moyers explores how America’s vast inequality didn’t just happen, it’s been politically engineered.

I’ve embedded the show below. It’s obviously challenging for English Language Learners, but they’ve made the transcript available, too. In addition, they’ve published a very accessible chart.

Moyers & Company 101: On Winner Take All Politics from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

The Top 1 Percent: What Jobs Do They Have? is a cool NY Times interactive.

The Great Divergence In Pictures: A visual guide to income inequality

Feedback is welcome.

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