Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2019
Publication Title
The Journal of Economic Education
Abstract
In economic development and other economics electives, students regularly encounter economic measures of absolute and relative deprivation, from poverty measures like the Foster-Greer-Thorbecke index to measures of distribution like the Gini index. By “doing economics,” students practice applying economic measurement to real-world data and develop more general data literacy. The author proposes a series of exercises starting with stylized 10-household economies, proceeding to nationally representative cross-sectional surveys using MS Excel or Google Spreadsheets, and culminating in students applying their acquired data literacy to a team project. The data sources are easily tailored to alternative household surveys in low- and middle-income countries that include the required variables. Students learn data literacy through recognizing the properties of rectangular data, visualizing data appropriately, and creating aggregate economic measures.
Keywords
data literacy, development, economic education, inequality, poverty
Volume
50
Issue
3
First Page
284
Last Page
298
DOI
10.1080/00220485.2019.1618762
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Rights
Licensed to Smith College and distributed CC-BY under the Smith College Faculty Open Access Policy.
Recommended Citation
Halliday, Simon, "Data Literacy in Economic Development" (2019). Economics: Faculty Publications, Smith College, Northampton, MA.
https://scholarworks.smith.edu/eco_facpubs/12
Comments
Peer reviewed accepted manuscript
JEL CODES: A22, I32