Using photographs to teach cross-country differences in real GDP per capita

I came across this novel idea of using photographs to teach cross-country differences in real per-capita GDP in the Journal of Economics Teaching. It draws on over 44,000 internationally comparable photographs (of households and their living conditions). Most courses focus on how real GDP per capita is calculated, the concept (and the data underlying it) may be disconnected from what students know (e.g., a home and its defining characteristics, the availability of utilities, occupants’ health and hygiene, quality of food, etc.) or can relate to (e.g., educational attainment, political regime characteristics, crime rates, access to electricity and sanitation, pollution levels, etc.).

The activity requires students to record living conditions for households of various income levels by investigating a set of images that depict bedrooms, kitchens, bathrooms, health/personal hygiene of household members, and the next “big thing” they plan to buy. Students then link the households’ characteristics with the data on real GDP per capita through a series of exercises in order to reveal the extent to which real GDP per capita captures the living conditions within and across countries. The proposed assignment also caters to development economics courses, where forming an accurate and palpable idea about the living conditions within and across countries represents the first step towards understanding the factors that facilitate or inhibit economic growth, thereby allowing students to think about possible policies aimed at facilitating development. The images are taken from the GapMinder Project and the Dollar Street platformwere created in an effort to challenge and dismiss common misconceptions that surround global issues (e.g., the “mega-misconception that the world is divided in two,” rich versus poor, West versus the rest, developed versus developing, or North versus South. The Dollar Street features 428 households from 66 countries. Households, which are described by over 44,000 photos, are placed onto a virtual street in accordance with their monthly income level (i.e., from lowest to highest).

The paperalso has all the resources required to run the Dollar Street Assignment and would be a good introductory exercise when teaching Development Economics. Furthermore it is a very good way of showing that comparisons between countries using real GDP per capita are rather simplistic and tell little about the cross-country differences in living conditions and the socio-economic realities behind the data. Below are some images from the Gapminder Project’s Dollar Street platform.