Dollar Street

Dollar Street is a free photographic library that asks a deceptively simple question: what does daily life actually look like at different income levels around the world? Photographers visited more than 300 families in over 50 countries and documented the same everyday objects in each home — the front door, the beds, the kitchen, the stove, the toilet, the toothbrush, the shoes, what the family eats for dinner. Every home is then placed on a street ordered by monthly income rather than by country.

The effect on students is immediate. Browsing the "toilets" or "kitchens" row shows that a family in Nigeria and a family in Bolivia at the same income level often live far more alike than two families from the same country at opposite ends of the income scale. It replaces the flat idea of rich and poor nations with a much more accurate picture of a global income spectrum, and it does it with photographs rather than argument.

For homeschool use, the interface is the strength. Students can filter by country, by region, by income bracket, or by any of roughly 135 documented topics, and can open any family''s profile to see the full photo set plus notes on their work, household size and income. It supports open-ended assignments — compare four kitchens across income levels, or trace one object across a whole region — and it gives writing and discussion prompts that need no prior background knowledge.

It suits world cultures, geography, economics, social studies and media-literacy work, and is accessible from roughly upper elementary through high school; the visual format means younger children can take part in a guided discussion. Dollar Street is free, needs no account, and the entire photo collection is published under a Creative Commons licence for use in teaching materials. Browse more from Gapminder.