Income Disparity

Inspiration

We wanted to raise awareness around the massive income disparity between different areas in California.

What it does

Our clicker game involves graphs showing Californian regions' incomes, along with a button that plots an income line for the user. Each click increases the user's balance by half a year's salary. However, it is extremely difficult for the user to escape into a higher income bracket, highlighting real life economic inequalities.

How we built it

We started off by cleaning historical income data from a large database and used linear regression to predict the future values for two different regions in California using Python. We then created our HTML file, set up our text and graphs, created our functions using JavaScript, and linked the CSS files.

Challenges we ran into

Due to our limited coding experience and our unfamiliarity with JavaScript, we had to learn quickly how to implement an animated graph and we never quite got the right animation that we wanted for the lines.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that we were able to create a project even though we had extremely limited coding experience and build a visually-appealing game.

What we learned

There were a lot of issues that we had to troubleshoot and fixed but through our process we learned a lot about HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and how to use GitHub. Additionally, we also gained a lot of soft skills like improved teamwork and communication.

What's next for Income Disparity

We can add more options for the players to earn more money, as well as expand upon different revenue modifiers on top of getting a bachelor's. Furthermore, we also discussed expanding our end screen results and showing a comparison to certain individuals in the top 1% to show the futility of catching up despite your strongest efforts.