Internet Exercises

EXERCISE 1

It used to be that you had to go to the library and sort though government publications to find statistics on family income and poverty. Now most of the key statistics are available on-line, and you can download and print many reports. For statistics on poverty, the place to go is the U.S. Bureau of the Census home page, www.census.gov. Click on Subjects A-Z, then P, then Poverty Data. The Bureau's annual statistical reports on poverty, from which Figure 4.2 was tabulated, are in Portable Document Format (PDF) and can be downloaded using Adobe Acrobat software (which itself can usually be downloaded free from the Adobe web site, www.adobe.com). Historical tables are available as well. How does the Census Bureau measure poverty?

EXERCISE 2

The Population Reference Bureau is sponsoring a site that provides statistics about families, along with options for graphing and displaying information: www.ameristat.org. Click on "Income and Poverty." Then select information about racial and ethnic differences. What percentage of poor families are white, African American, or Hispanic?

EXERCISE 3 - Children and Poverty

The National Center for Children in Poverty is concerned with preventing child poverty and improving the lives of children in poverty. Visit their site, http://cpmcnet.columbia.edu/dept/nccp/, and click on Child Poverty Facts on the left. Click on Child in Poverty Fact Sheet (June 2001).What is the extent of child poverty? How does the Center suggest that we prevent child poverty? Whose responsibility is it to prevent child poverty?

EXERCISE 4 - How the Other 1% Lives

The internet is full of shopping sites for all types of consumers. Find some sites that you think would interest the richest consumers-those with lots of disposable income. Find some for fancy cars, jewelry, home furnishings, etc. How are these sites different from shopping sites for the rest of us? For example, the site for Rolex watches (http://www.rolex.com/) informs the viewer right away that one can only purchase their products from a dealer-not on the internet. How do they portray their goods to make it clear that they are for the elite?