Week 15 Political Analysis Workshop: What Does a Poverty Line Count?

Part 1 — The Big Picture

This week you learned that a poverty line is a definition, not a fact of nature: the World Bank's International Poverty Line is 3.00 dollars a day in 2021 international prices, set in June 2025 in place of 2.15 dollars a day in 2017 prices. Count people against that line and the world shows a long fall in extreme poverty; move the line and the same world reads very differently. In this workshop you rebuild the World Bank's and Our World in Data's figures in a spreadsheet, watch a line change move a count in a made-up country while no income changes, run the data scaffold, map a commentator's argument, and catch a chatbot's political-science slips. The habit you practise is the one the whole course has built: say what the evidence shows, say what it does not, and keep the verdict for an argument from values.

Time budget: Plan for about 90 minutes.

Part 2 — The Task

Guiding question: What does the World Bank's count of the world's extremely poor measure, and what does it not, and how far can the fall from 1990 to 2025 carry an argument about trade policy?

Workshop data: The World Bank's International Poverty Line and count with Our World in Data's shares, and an illustrative household survey in a made-up country

Source: Table 1's line, counts, and shares are the World Bank's published figures from its poverty overview and its June 2025 update to global poverty lines, and Our World in Data's figures from its poverty page, which is built from the World Bank's Poverty and Inequality Platform. Table 3 is an illustrative survey of 10 households in a made-up country, invented for this workshop.

• Rows: 8 rows of pinned figures in Table 1, plus 10 rows of illustrative household incomes in Table 3
• Columns: figure; source; value as the source states it; your calculation; result
• Line and price base: 3.00 dollars a day in 2021 international prices, set in June 2025
• Argument premises: 4 premises in the commentator's argument (Table 4)

Part 3 — Materials & Procedure

Tools and materials

• Authoritative archives and data sources (the National Archives, the Avalon Project, Project Gutenberg, the Legal Information Institute, un.org, the House of Commons Library, Pew Research Center, Freedom House, V-Dem, the World Bank, Our World in Data) plus a spreadsheet for the seat-allocation and margin-of-error arithmetic, and one approved chatbot used as an analysis partner whose political-science slips the student catches
• A document or notebook for your written answers

Ways of working

• primary-text-analysis
• read-the-data
• argument-map-and-steel-man

Procedure

1. Open the World Bank's poverty overview page and its June 2025 Update to Global Poverty Lines factsheet. Find the current International Poverty Line with its price base, the line it replaced, and the 1990 and 2025 counts, and check them against Table 1. Tool: Authoritative archives and data sources (the National Archives, the Avalon Project, Project Gutenberg, the Legal Information Institute, un.org, the House of Commons Library, Pew Research Center, Freedom House, V-Dem, the World Bank, Our World in Data) plus a spreadsheet for the seat-allocation and margin-of-error arithmetic, and one approved chatbot used as an analysis partner whose political-science slips the student catches. Check: The line, the replaced line, and both counts in Table 1 match the World Bank's pages, each with its price base or year.
2. Open Our World in Data's poverty page. Find the share of the world's population below the line in 1990 and 2025, and the shares below 5, 10, and 30 dollars a day, and check them against Table 1. Tool: Authoritative archives and data sources (the National Archives, the Avalon Project, Project Gutenberg, the Legal Information Institute, un.org, the House of Commons Library, Pew Research Center, Freedom House, V-Dem, the World Bank, Our World in Data) plus a spreadsheet for the seat-allocation and margin-of-error arithmetic, and one approved chatbot used as an analysis partner whose political-science slips the student catches. Check: Every share in Table 1 matches the page, written with the word about as the page rounds it.
3. Open a blank spreadsheet. In A1 to A6 type the values 2021, 2017, 2300, 831, 44, and 10. In B1 type =A1-A2, in B2 type =A3-A4, in B3 type =A4/A3*100, and in B4 type =A5-A6. Then type 81 in A7 and =A7-A6 in B5. Tool: Authoritative archives and data sources (the National Archives, the Avalon Project, Project Gutenberg, the Legal Information Institute, un.org, the House of Commons Library, Pew Research Center, Freedom House, V-Dem, the World Bank, Our World in Data) plus a spreadsheet for the seat-allocation and margin-of-error arithmetic, and one approved chatbot used as an analysis partner whose political-science slips the student catches. Check: B1 to B5 hold the years between price bases, the fall in millions, the 2025 count as a percent of 1990, the fall in percentage points, and the gap between the 3-dollar and 30-dollar readings.
4. Copy each result, rounded to one decimal place where needed, into the blank cells of Table 1, writing percentage points, not percent, for every gap between two shares. Tool: Authoritative archives and data sources (the National Archives, the Avalon Project, Project Gutenberg, the Legal Information Institute, un.org, the House of Commons Library, Pew Research Center, Freedom House, V-Dem, the World Bank, Our World in Data) plus a spreadsheet for the seat-allocation and margin-of-error arithmetic, and one approved chatbot used as an analysis partner whose political-science slips the student catches. Check: Table 1 has no blank cells, and each result is written with the subtraction or division that produced it.
5. Read Table 3, the illustrative survey of 10 households in Varro. In a new sheet, type the 10 incomes in B2 to B11. In C2 type =IF(B2>=2.5,0,1) and in D2 type =IF(B2>=3.5,0,1), fill both down to row 11, then total each column with =SUM( over its ten cells and turn each total into a share of 10 households. Tool: Authoritative archives and data sources (the National Archives, the Avalon Project, Project Gutenberg, the Legal Information Institute, un.org, the House of Commons Library, Pew Research Center, Freedom House, V-Dem, the World Bank, Our World in Data) plus a spreadsheet for the seat-allocation and margin-of-error arithmetic, and one approved chatbot used as an analysis partner whose political-science slips the student catches. Check: Table 3 is filled, and both totals and both shares are written with the formula or hand count that produced them.
6. Complete Table 2, the data scaffold, for the World Bank's count: what is measured, over whom and when, what the count shows, what it does not show, and whether it shows a correlation or a cause. Tool: Authoritative archives and data sources (the National Archives, the Avalon Project, Project Gutenberg, the Legal Information Institute, un.org, the House of Commons Library, Pew Research Center, Freedom House, V-Dem, the World Bank, Our World in Data) plus a spreadsheet for the seat-allocation and margin-of-error arithmetic, and one approved chatbot used as an analysis partner whose political-science slips the student catches. Check: Every row of Table 2 is filled, and the last row answers correlation or cause in words.
7. Read the commentator's argument in Table 4. Label each premise empirical or normative, name one assumption the argument needs, state the strongest objection as its own defenders would put it, and write a two-sentence reply. Tool: Authoritative archives and data sources (the National Archives, the Avalon Project, Project Gutenberg, the Legal Information Institute, un.org, the House of Commons Library, Pew Research Center, Freedom House, V-Dem, the World Bank, Our World in Data) plus a spreadsheet for the seat-allocation and margin-of-error arithmetic, and one approved chatbot used as an analysis partner whose political-science slips the student catches. Check: Table 4 has no blank cells, and the objection is written in a form its defenders would accept as fair.
8. Paste your completed tables into one approved chatbot, then paste the prompt from Part 6 below them. Record each of its answers in Table 5 and check every one against the World Bank and Our World in Data pages, your own tables, and this week's definitions. Tool: Authoritative archives and data sources (the National Archives, the Avalon Project, Project Gutenberg, the Legal Information Institute, un.org, the House of Commons Library, Pew Research Center, Freedom House, V-Dem, the World Bank, Our World in Data) plus a spreadsheet for the seat-allocation and margin-of-error arithmetic, and one approved chatbot used as an analysis partner whose political-science slips the student catches. Check: Table 5 has one row for each of the chatbot's answers, with each marked as checked against a source.

Fallback route

When to use it: Use this route if no spreadsheet is available or the World Bank or Our World in Data pages cannot be reached.

Work the same steps by hand. Table 1 already prints every pinned figure exactly as the World Bank and Our World in Data state it, so do each subtraction and division by hand or with a calculator, and write each calculation so it can be checked. In Table 3, mark each household below each line by comparing its income with 2.50 and 3.50, then count the marks. Complete every table, answer every analysis question, do the critique step, and submit the same items for equal credit.

This route earns the same credit as the primary route.

Part 4 — The Scaffold

Table 1 holds the pinned World Bank and Our World in Data figures; check each against its source page, then compute the blank cells in a spreadsheet.

Student scaffold table 1

Figure	Source	Value as the source states it	Your calculation	Result
International Poverty Line	World Bank	3.00 dollars a day in 2021 international prices, set in June 2025
The line it replaced	World Bank	2.15 dollars a day in 2017 prices	Years between the two price bases
People in extreme poverty, 1990	World Bank	around 2.3 billion (2,300 million)
People in extreme poverty, 2025	World Bank	around 831 million	Fewer people, in millions
2025 count as a percent of the 1990 count	World Bank
Share below the line, 1990	Our World in Data	about 44 percent
Share below the line, 2025	Our World in Data	about 10 percent	Fall, in percentage points
Share below 5, 10, and 30 dollars a day	Our World in Data	about 24, 52, and 81 percent	Gap between the 3-dollar and 30-dollar readings

Table 2 is the data scaffold you use on every real figure; it keeps what a count shows apart from what it does not.

Student scaffold table 2

Scaffold question	Your answer for the World Bank count
What is measured?
Over whom and when?
What does the count show?
What does it not show?
Correlation or cause?

Table 3 is an illustrative survey of 10 households in a made-up country, Varro, whose own poverty line was first set at 2.50 units a day and later raised to 3.50 units a day; no household's income changed between the two counts.

Student scaffold table 3

Household	Daily income (illustrative units)	Below the 2.50 line? (1 = yes, 0 = no)	Below the 3.50 line? (1 = yes, 0 = no)
Household A	1.80
Household B	2.20
Household C	2.60
Household D	3.10
Household E	3.40
Household F	4.00
Household G	5.50
Household H	6.20
Household I	8.00
Household J	12.50

Table 4 maps one commentator's argument about the poverty figures so you can label every premise by its kind and test it fairly.

Student scaffold table 4

Part of the argument	What the commentator says (illustrative)	Kind (empirical or normative)
Thesis	The fall in extreme poverty proves that free trade worked, so every country ought to remove its trade barriers.	Normative
Premise 1	Around 831 million people lived below the World Bank's line in 2025, down from around 2.3 billion in 1990.
Premise 2	The share of the world's population below the line fell from about 44 percent to about 10 percent.
Premise 3	A country ought to put its economy's total gains ahead of the losses in any one town.
Premise 4	Governments ought to judge every trade policy by its effect on the world's poorest people.
One assumption the argument needs
Strongest objection, stated as its defenders would
Your reply

Table 5 is your critique log; it records what the chatbot said and what the sources or your tables show instead.

Student scaffold table 5

Chatbot answer	What it said	What the source or your tables show	Correction
1
2
3
4
5
6
7

Part 5 — Analysis Questions

1. Report the fall in the world's extreme-poverty count, in millions, and the 2025 count as a percent of the 1990 count, rounded to one decimal place, and show the formula or hand calculation you used. Then report the fall in the share below the line in percentage points, and explain why it is written in percentage points and not percent.
2. From Table 3, report how many of Varro's 10 households sit below the 2.50 line and how many sit below the 3.50 line, as counts and as shares. No income changed between the two counts. What does this small illustrative example show about what a poverty line is?
3. Using your Table 2, explain what the World Bank's count can and cannot tell you. Why does it show a decline but not its cause, and why is a figure built on 2.15 dollars a day not the current line?
4. Using Table 4, name the premise that carries the argument's value judgment about trade-offs, name the premises a source page could check, and state the strongest objection as its defenders would put it before you reply. Then explain why the thesis is a normative step that the poverty figures alone do not settle.
5. Name two limits of this analysis, such as that the counts are rounded by their source, that Table 3 is illustrative, that a world total hides differences between and within countries, or that a share depends on the line chosen, and say how each limit affects what you can conclude.
6. Choose one and answer it in 3–4 sentences: (a) Should the World Bank's line be set higher than 3.00 dollars a day, and what is the strongest case against your choice? (b) Which single figure in Table 1 would you show a skeptical friend to explain what the world's poverty data can and cannot tell us, and why that one?

Part 6 — AI-Critique Moment

Choose one equal-credit critique route. Route A: ask an approved AI tool to critique your completed work, then check its response against your own evidence. Route B is the no-AI equivalent printed below.

Approved tools: Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, Grok, Microsoft Copilot.

Prompt to paste:

I've pasted my completed workshop tables above. Please do seven things. First, quote the exact sentence from Ricardo's 1817 book that defines comparative advantage. Second, name the court case that ruled on the World Bank's International Poverty Line, and say what it held. Third, tell me the World Bank's current International Poverty Line, in which prices, and about how many people lived below it in 2025. Fourth, tell me who first stated comparative advantage and who described liberal market economies and coordinated market economies. Fifth, tell me whether free trade or managed trade is the better policy. Sixth, explain in one sentence why extreme poverty fell between 1990 and 2025. Seventh, label each of the four premises in Table 4 as empirical or normative.

Test the response for these likely failures:

• Chatbots often produce a confident one-line quotation said to come from Ricardo's 1817 book, such as a slogan about every nation making what it makes best, with quotation marks around words the book does not contain.
• Chatbots often name a court case, with a confident citation, said to have ruled on the World Bank's poverty line or to have made it binding on governments.
• Chatbots often give 2.15 or 1.90 dollars a day as the current line, or state a 2025 count that differs from the World Bank's, with no price base or year attached.
• Chatbots often credit comparative advantage to Hall and Soskice, or credit the varieties-of-capitalism pair to Ricardo, swapping the works.
• Chatbots often declare that free trade or managed trade is the better policy outright, as if the poverty figures settled it.
• Chatbots often explain the fall in extreme poverty in one sentence with a single cause, such as free trade or foreign aid.
• Chatbots often label premise 3 or premise 4 of Table 4 as empirical, or call premise 1 proof that free trade caused the fall.

In 3–5 sentences, say what the chatbot got right, quote at least two sentences it got wrong, and correct each one with evidence from the World Bank or Our World in Data pages, your tables, or this week's definitions.

Equivalent route (no AI required)

No AI account is required for this workshop. This route assesses the same objectives, Objective 8 (explain the major theories of international relations — realism, liberalism, and constructivism — and the basics of the international system, international organizations and law, and global political economy, presenting competing theories and contested global questions evenhandedly and reading global data for what a measure and a line mean) and Objective 3 (compare the major political ideologies and normative theories evenhandedly — liberalism, conservatism, socialism and its family, and the smaller families; justice, liberty, equality, and rights; the harm principle; Rawls and Nozick — stating each position in its strongest form and distinguishing empirical from normative claims), takes comparable effort of about the same 90 minutes, uses the same rubric, and earns the same credit. Instead of the chatbot, critique this flawed analysis, printed here in full: "Ricardo wrote that 'every nation must make what it makes best and buy the rest.' A court later ruled that the World Bank's poverty line is binding on member countries. The current International Poverty Line is 2.15 dollars a day, and about 700 million people lived below it in 2025. Hall and Soskice first stated comparative advantage, and Ricardo described liberal and coordinated market economies. Free trade is plainly the better policy, and managed trade is a mistake. Extreme poverty fell because of free trade. Premise 3 in Table 4 is a fact anyone can check, and premise 1 proves that free trade caused the fall." Mark every error you can find, quote at least two, and correct each one in 3–5 sentences with evidence from the World Bank or Our World in Data pages, your tables, or this week's definitions. Submit the marked-up analysis and your correction in place of the chatbot report and share link.

Part 7 — What to Submit

• All five completed scaffold tables
• Written answers to all six analysis questions
• The chatbot critique report with its share link, or the equivalent route's marked-up flawed analysis

Deliverable:

A short Political Analysis Workshop report on the World Bank's poverty line and count and one illustrative line change: five completed tables (the pinned figures rebuilt with their differences and shares, the data scaffold for the World Bank's count, the household survey counted under two lines, the commentator's argument mapped with every premise labelled, and a critique log), written answers to six analysis questions, and a critique of a chatbot's version of the same analysis, or, on the equivalent route, a marked-up correction of the printed flawed analysis. Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text. Choose how you show it: written answers, a recorded explanation with a transcript, or a labelled chart of the four daily lines' shares with short notes; every form is graded by the same scoring criteria.

Rubric

The rubric below shows how each submitted part is evaluated; bands are full, partial, or none.

Workshop evaluation criteria

Criterion	Full	Partial	None
Reading and rebuilding the pinned figures	Every figure in Table 1 matches its source page with its line, price base, and year; every difference and share is computed with the method shown; and every gap between two shares is written in percentage points.	Most figures are checked and computed, but a result is missing, a method is not shown, a price base or year is dropped, or a gap is written as percent.	No figures are checked or computed, or figures are copied from memory or a chatbot.
Reading what a line and a count show and do not	The data scaffold is complete, the Varro counts and shares are worked under both lines, and the answers explain that a line is a definition, that the count shows a decline but not its cause, and why 2.15 dollars is not the current line.	The scaffold or the Varro count is incomplete, or the count is partly read as a cause, or the old line is treated as current.	No scaffold or line-change count is given, or the count is treated as proof of a cause.
The argument map and the strongest objection	Every premise in Table 4 is labelled correctly, no premise is treated as showing a cause, an assumption is named without being treated as a flaw, the strongest objection is stated fairly before a reply, and the thesis is identified as a normative step.	One premise is mislabelled, or the assumption is missing, or the objection is weakened, or the thesis is treated as following from the figures alone.	The premises are unlabelled, or no objection is stated.
Critique and correction	The chatbot critique report or the marked-up flawed analysis quotes at least two errors and corrects each with evidence from the World Bank or Our World in Data pages, the tables, or this week's definitions; both routes earn this band equally.	The chatbot critique report or the marked-up flawed analysis names an error but corrects it without evidence, or corrects only one; both routes earn this band equally.	No chatbot critique report or marked-up flawed analysis is submitted, or the output is pasted without any check; both routes are scored the same way.
Limits and reflection	Two real limits are named with their effect on the conclusion, and the chosen reflection option is answered with a reason.	One limit is named, or the reflection gives no reason.	No limit or reflection is given.

Quality Gate

• Every figure in Table 1 matches the World Bank or Our World in Data page, written with its line, its price base, and its year, and keeps the word around or about the source uses.
• Every difference and share comes from your own formula or hand calculation, never from memory or a chatbot, and every gap between two shares is written in percentage points.
• The 2.15-dollar line is never cited as the current line, and the 3.00-dollar line is always written with its 2021 international prices.
• The count is never read as proof of a cause; the data scaffold ends with correlation or cause, answered in words.
• Every premise in Table 4 is labelled empirical or normative, and the objection is stated as its own defenders would put it.
• No quotation, court case, statistic, study, or source is invented anywhere in the submission, and Ricardo and Hall and Soskice are described in words, never quoted.
• The critique quotes the chatbot or the flawed analysis and corrects at least two errors with evidence.