Inequality · Do

Equal dignity, unequal outcomes. Here’s the part you control.

Facing eviction, or need your taxes done free? Start here.

Five minutes sends cash to people in extreme poverty. Fifteen minutes writes your state legislator about one bill. A shift a week in tax season gets families’ refunds filed free and right. About a dozen people own more than the poorest half of humanity, by Oxfam’s count in January 2026;¹ you can’t change that from your kitchen. Every action here carries a label for how well it’s proven, and says whether it touches poverty or inequality, which are different things.

If you’re facing eviction: in New York City, free legal help is available in every ZIP code, whatever your immigration status: say “I would like an attorney” at your first court date, or call 311 and ask for the Tenant Helpline. Elsewhere, find legal aid by ZIP. If you need your taxes done free: IRS volunteers help people who generally make about $70,244 or less; find a site.¹⁶

En español: si enfrenta un desalojo en la ciudad de Nueva York, hay ayuda legal gratuita en todos los códigos postales, sin importar su estatus migratorio. En su primera fecha en la corte diga “I would like an attorney” (quiero un abogado), o llame al 311 y pida la Tenant Helpline; el 311 atiende en español. Para declarar impuestos gratis, los voluntarios del IRS ayudan a quienes generalmente ganan unos $70,244 o menos.

What’s true Keep it going

The whole thing

Give cash to people in extreme poverty.

In a trial across 653 Kenyan villages, cash transfers lifted recipients and their neighbours, every dollar adding about $2.40 to the local economy, with little inflation. strong: for recipients In an earlier Kenyan trial, recipients’ assets were still 40% higher three years on. Of six papers that measured spillovers to neighbours, four found none, or a slight loss; the two that found gains both come from the 653-village trial.² This is poverty, not inequality: no trial finds it moves a country’s wealth gap. Where to give.
5 minutes · any amount
Write your state legislator about one named bill. US

It can touch poverty or inequality, depending on the bill. In your own words, with one ask and one line about why. moderate It’s the only thing on this page with experimental evidence of moving lawmakers’ votes: in a field experiment, calls from constituents made state legislators about 12 points more likely to back a low-profile bill.³ The live bills.
15 minutes · $0
Do free tax returns in tax season. US

This is poverty, not the wealth gap. Each return you finish is a family’s refund filed free and right; in New York the fee they keep averages $346, and the average Earned Income Tax Credit is $2,894. weak: official counts, no trial About forty returns a season per volunteer in New York City. Be clear what it isn’t: six trials found that telling people about free sites barely moves how many claim the credit, because most who miss it don’t file at all.⁴⁶ How to sign up.
8–10 hours of training, then shifts · $0

Pick the day and time you’ll do step one:

Near you

Enter your ZIP code and this page adds the steps that depend on where you live: your state’s own programs and laws, and the finders that take a ZIP. The code stays in your browser, like the ticks.

1. Cash, directly

GiveDirectly → Donate. GiveWell’s independent check finds 71% to 85% of every dollar reaches recipients, depending on the country.²
Read the papers, not the charity’s summaries: GiveDirectly’s own research page overstates its trials in places. It headlines a 29% fall in inequality within villages; the paper finds no change in the Gini, and a fall only in narrower measures. It disclosed about $1.2 million diverted by staff in the DRC in 2022, 0.8% of that year’s transfers.²
If what you want is the most lives saved per dollar, GiveWell rates its top charities (malaria, vitamin A, vaccines) above cash. See child hunger.

2. One named bill

Find your state legislators with Plural, a company’s free lookup tool that takes your address; in New York, at nyassembly.gov. Write five sentences: who you are, where you live, the bill, the ask, why it matters to you. Congressional staff rank a personal email far above a form email (92% against 56%); a call counts too.³
New York, as of 5 November 2026: two bills sit in the Assembly after passing the Senate, the Twenty-First Century Anti-Trust Act and the sovereign-debt “Champerty Fix”. Both die when the session ends unless reintroduced. In the city, COPA (Int. 905-A), which gives nonprofits the first chance to bid on distressed buildings, passed the Council on 22 October and was awaiting the mayor’s signature.⁵
Elsewhere: pick the one bill in your state this session that touches wages, tenants, tax credits or housing, and write about that one. The prompt below finds it.

3. Free tax prep

In New York City: NYC Free Tax Prep is recruiting for the 2027 season now. About 8–10 hours of training, no experience, over 16 (under-18s with a parent’s consent form). The last info session is 3 December 2026.⁶
Anywhere in the US: sign up at the IRS volunteer form; the IRS matches you with a local site. Certify free on Link & Learn Taxes. Greeters, interpreters and IT help need no tax-law certification.⁶
Know someone who should use it: in the 2026 season it served households with children or other dependents earning up to $97,000, or up to $68,000 without.⁶
Accuracy, honestly: the IRS’s own reviews put volunteer sites at 98.5%; the last independent tests on anonymous visits, from 2009 to 2013, found far lower rates. We found none since.⁴

4. Keep a family in their home

This is poverty and housing, not the wealth gap. A lawyer in housing court is the best-tested housing lever one person can push for. moderate In a randomised trial in New York City’s housing court, tenants picked at random to get a lawyer had a judgment against them 32% of the time, against 52% of the rest. When the city made counsel a right, tenants who got a lawyer through it were somewhere between 45% and 78% less likely to be evicted, at about $3,200 a household. Even so, from April to June 2025 only 44% of tenants in court had full representation.⁷

Ask your council member or state legislator to fund right-to-counsel fully; that’s a bill-two message. New York City’s program is run by the Office of Civil Justice.
Ask your city’s tenant legal-aid providers how to help; we haven’t vetted individual organisations for this page yet, so pick one with audited accounts and say so if you can’t find them.
Community land trusts keep homes affordable when resold, and the evidence for the people housed is real, but the one near us, Western Queens CLT, is small, with no completed project and receipts under $50,000. weak: for this organisation Volunteer if you like; don’t count it as the lever.⁵

If someone works in your home

A nanny, a cleaner, a caregiver. strong: by construction, for that worker It changes one person’s pay and nothing about inequality, and it’s the one floor entirely yours to set. New York’s Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights:⁸

At least $17.00 an hour in New York City, Long Island and Westchester ($16.00 elsewhere in the state). It stays there on 1 January 2027; a rise to $17.60 from 1 March 2027 needs the Legislature.
Overtime at time and a half after 40 hours a week (44 if they live in). 24 hours off every week. 3 paid days of rest after a year.
Paid sick leave in NYC: 1 hour for every 30 worked, up to 40 hours a year.⁹
Weekly pay with a written pay statement. No deductions for breakage.
$3,000 or more in a year: Social Security and Medicare, filed on Schedule H with your own return.¹⁰ 20 or more hours a week (and 30 or more days a year), or live-in: disability and paid family leave coverage. 40 or more hours a week, or live-in: workers’ compensation too.⁸
Start with a written agreement. Hand in Hand has templates for nannies and house cleaners.
If your own workplace is organising, join. moderate: contested Unions explain a significant share of the fall in US inequality from the mid-1930s to the late 1940s. Whether winning a vote raises pay at that workplace is disputed: one study finds no wage effect, one finds average pay falls as better-paid workers leave, and one finds pay and pensions rise.¹¹

What it costs, worked out. A New York City cleaner, 20 hours a week at $25 an hour: $26,000 a year in wages, plus about $2,800 in employer taxes and insurance. That’s 10.8% on top.⁸¹⁰

What happens after

After you give to GiveDirectly online, you should get a confirmation email shortly. For most programs, its staff pick extremely poor villages from national poverty surveys, then enrol adults door to door. The money goes to each recipient’s phone by mobile money, with a text when it’s sent. GiveDirectly’s FAQ says a household in its Africa programs typically gets a one-time $750 to $1,000; its how-it-works page describes about $100 first, then about $650 two months later. In its standard programs, it says it enrols the person your gift will reach within a few months, and pays within a few months more. You can’t choose the person.¹⁷
To stop or change a monthly gift to GiveDirectly: on givedirectly.org, follow “Edit monthly donation”, choose “Email me a login link”, and manage the gift in your Impact Dashboard (checked 6 Nov 2026).¹⁷
After you write your state legislator, you may or may not get a reply. Across 41 experiments that wrote to public officials, about half the messages got one (53%), and elected officials answered less often than appointed ones. Most of those messages asked for help, not for a vote. In a 2008 experiment, 2,747 of 4,859 state legislators answered an email asking how to register to vote; in another study of state legislators, 19% replied. Writers with Black or Latino names got fewer replies. Some studies find officials answer people in their own district more often, so say where you live.¹⁸
What the office does with it: we found little published for state offices. In 2013, Oregon’s House Speaker wrote that her office got over 100 emails a day. She couldn’t reply personally to each, so her staff gave her daily updates on the messages and helped her draft replies.¹⁸
After you sign up to volunteer at a free tax site, the IRS shares your details with sponsoring organisations near you for follow-up. Training is free, online or in a classroom. To certify on Link & Learn Taxes, register on its test site, VITA/TCE Central, with the name on your government ID. Pass two tests first, on the volunteer standards of conduct and on interviewing and quality review, then the tax-law test for your course, such as Basic or Advanced. Each needs 80%, and you get two tries. Then sign Form 13615, the volunteer agreement. Your site coordinator checks your photo ID and certification before you work at a site.¹⁹
How much time it takes: sites are generally open nights and weekends, and the IRS says the hours are flexible. NYC Free Tax Prep’s timeline: info sessions from October to December 2026, training and the free, open-book IRS tests from November 2026 to January 2027, and returns from January to April 2027. Its flyer asks for one 4-to-8-hour shift a week, with on-site support on every return; its FAQ says each week or every other week.¹⁹
If you ask for a lawyer in New York City Housing Court, legal-aid staff screen you on or shortly after your first court date. If you can’t get there, or you appear remotely, tell court staff you want an attorney. Legal Services NYC says full representation goes to tenants 60 or older, or with household income at or below twice the federal poverty guideline; the City’s page names no income test. There aren’t enough lawyers for everyone, so some tenants get advice to handle the case themselves. A judge can ask for a lawyer for a tenant who is very elderly or disabled. The lawyer is free; a caller who asks you for money is likely a scam.²⁰
How it tends to end: in cases with a full lawyer that closed in the City’s 2025 fiscal year, providers reported 83% of households allowed to stay. That count includes households given more time to move out.²⁰

In other languages: NYC’s 311 answers in more than 175, and the IRS’s free tax site locator lets you filter by 32 languages besides English.¹⁶

Questions people ask

Is the “dozen people” number fair?

It’s fragile. It counts debt, so an indebted graduate looks poorer than a debt-free farmer, and it moves with stock prices. Oxfam’s 2017 “eight men” was later revised to 61 people when better data arrived.¹ A steadier fact: the richest 10% own about three-quarters of the world’s wealth.¹²

Isn’t inequality the price of growth?

Probably more a drag than a price, but modestly. One study finds 20% to 40% of US growth from 1960 to 2010 came from opening jobs to women and Black Americans.¹³ Other studies find the opposite in the short run, and most of this work is correlation, not experiment.

Should I move my money to a credit union, or buy from co-ops?

For you, often yes: credit unions charged 5.44% against banks’ 7.41% on a new-car loan in late 2025, and you get a member vote. Worker-owned firms lay off fewer people. For inequality, no study measures what one person’s deposit or purchase changes, and the firms that convert to employee ownership were stronger to begin with. none but plausible Do it for the deal, not as your part.¹⁴

What can one person do about tax law?

Directly, very little. The live fights are in the states, decided by votes like California’s billionaire tax, which lost on 3 November. The most concrete moves are the ones above: one named bill, and getting credits already in the law filed right.

Doesn’t cash just get spent?

Spending is the point. In Kenya it raised what families ate and owned, and their neighbours’ incomes too.² The evidence in the US is weaker: recent monthly-payment trials found small effects or none.

Is Alaska’s oil dividend really a model?

Partly. It has paid every resident for over forty years without reducing employment, and it lowers poverty. But the Legislature sets the amount ($1,000 in 2025, $1,200 in 2026) and hasn’t followed the statutory formula since 2016, residents don’t govern the fund, and it came from an oil windfall most places don’t have.¹⁵

With an AI beside you

I live in [state]. List the bills in my state legislature this session that are still live and touch wages, tenants, tax credits or housing, with bill numbers, what each would do, and a link to the legislature's own page for each. Then help me write five sentences in my own words to my legislator about one of them.

I employ a [nanny / cleaner / caregiver] in [city, state] for [hours] a week at $[rate] an hour. Using my state's and the IRS's own pages, list exactly what I owe them and the government: wages, overtime, leave, taxes and insurance. Give me the forms and deadlines, link every source, and tell me what you couldn't confirm.

Send this page to one person:

Sources

Oxfam, Resisting the Rule of the Rich and its methodology note, January 2026: the 12 richest held $2.635 trillion, the poorest half about $2.567 trillion. Earlier counts: Oxfam, January 2018. primary
Egger, Haushofer, Miguel, Niehaus and Walker, General equilibrium effects of cash transfers, Econometrica 2022 (653 villages) research; Haushofer and Shapiro, the three-year follow-up, a January 2018 working paper (assets +40%) preprint; GiveWell, GiveDirectly cash for poverty relief, updated October 2025 (six papers measured spillovers; four found none or a slight loss) evaluator; GiveDirectly, the DRC case, 2023, and its research page (which overstates the papers in places) charity’s own figures; Banerjee, Faye, Krueger, Niehaus and Suri, Universal basic income: short-term results from a long-term experiment in Kenya, working paper, September 2023, read 6 Nov 2026 (no change in the Gini; the gap between the 75th and 25th percentiles of non-land wealth fell) preprint.
Bergan and Cole, Call your legislator, Political Behavior, 2015 (a field experiment in Michigan; the contacts were phone calls) research; Butler and Nickerson, Can learning constituency opinion affect how legislators vote?, 2011 (New Mexico) research; Congressional Management Foundation, Citizen-Centric Advocacy, 2017 (personal email 92% against form email 56%) primary.
IRS, Publication 5347, September 2026 (in the 2026 filing season, over 2.9 million returns and more than 84,500 volunteers; 98.5% accuracy on its own reviews) primary; IRS, EITC statistics ($2,894 average, tax year 2024) and participation rate by state (80.8% in its table for tax year 2022; 78% is the page’s “reported national estimate”) primary; NYC DCWP, Free Tax Prep FAQ ($346 average fee) primary; Goldin, Homonoff, Javaid and Schafer, Tax filing and take-up: experimental evidence on tax preparation outreach and EITC participation, 2021 (letters to 56,015 non-filers; small effects), and Linos, Prohofsky, Ramesh, Rothstein and Unrath, Can nudges increase take-up of the EITC?, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 2022 (six trials, 1 million observations; no effect found) research; the independent accuracy tests of 2009 to 2013 via Accounting Today news.
City Limits, Council passes bill giving nonprofits first dibs, 22 October 2026 news; NYC Community Land Initiative, COPA, read 5 Nov 2026 charity’s own figures; Western Queens CLT’s filings via ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer (990-N, receipts under $50,000, 2024 and 2025) primary; Wang, Cahen, Acolin and Walter, Tracking growth and evaluating performance of shared equity homeownership programs during housing market fluctuations, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy working paper, April 2019, read 6 Nov 2026 (shared-equity homes, land trusts among them: 95% priced for families at or below 80% of area median income, resales included) preprint.
NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, NYC Free Tax Prep and Become a volunteer, read 5 Nov 2026; IRS, Choose your tax volunteer role, 31 March 2026. primary
Seron et al., The impact of legal counsel on outcomes for poor tenants in New York City’s housing court, Law & Society Review, 2001 (a randomised trial) research; Cassidy and Currie, The effects of legal representation on tenant outcomes in housing court, 2022 research; NYC Office of Civil Justice, annual report, fiscal year 2025 (44% of tenants in court fully represented, April to June 2025) primary.
New York Department of Labor, Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights, minimum wage and facts for employers of domestic workers; NYS Labor Law §170; NYS Workers’ Compensation Board, when disability and paid family leave coverage is required; Governor’s office, minimum wage 2027. The cost example adds FICA, federal and state unemployment and disability insurance at 2026 rates. primary
NYC DCWP, Protected Time Off Law: frequently asked questions (formerly Earned Safe and Sick Time), updated 22 February 2026. primary
IRS, Publication 926, Household Employer’s Tax Guide, 2026. primary
DiNardo and Lee, Economic impacts of new unionization on private sector employers, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2004 (no wage effect) research; Frandsen, The surprising impacts of unionization, Journal of Labor Economics, 2021 (average pay falls as older, better-paid workers leave; small effects on each worker) research; Knepper, From the fringe to the fore, Review of Economics and Statistics, 2020 (compensation and pension contributions rise) research; Farber, Herbst, Kuziemko and Naidu, Unions and inequality over the twentieth century, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2021, abstract read 6 Nov 2026 (unions explain a significant share of the fall in inequality from the mid-1930s to the late 1940s) research.
World Inequality Lab, World Inequality Report 2026, December 2025. research
Hsieh, Hurst, Jones and Klenow, The Allocation of Talent and U.S. Economic Growth, Econometrica 2019; Forbes, A Reassessment of the Relationship between Inequality and Growth, 2000. research
NCUA, Credit union and bank rates, Q4 2025 primary; directories: Certified EO, US worker co-ops, mapping.ncua.gov (choose “Select Low Income Designation” for one where more than half the members have low incomes) primary.
Alaska Department of Revenue, Permanent Fund Dividend Division, 21 September 2026 primary; Alaska’s News Source, dividends start this week, 30 September 2026, and Anchorage Daily News, on the 2026 dividend, 19 September 2026 (the amount is set by the Legislature in the budget) news.
NYC Human Resources Administration, legal services for tenants primary; Legal Services Corporation, find legal aid primary; IRS, free tax return preparation for qualifying taxpayers (reviewed 19 October 2026; no season named) and the site locator primary; NYC 311, languages, read 6 Nov 2026 primary.
GiveDirectly, FAQ and How it works, and its Impact Dashboard sign-in page, read 6 Nov 2026 (how recipients are chosen and paid, timing, the confirmation email, managing a monthly gift). charity’s own figures
Costa, How responsive are political elites? A meta-analysis of experiments on public officials, Journal of Experimental Political Science, 2017 (41 experiments; replies 53% of the time; 34 of them service requests) research; Butler and Broockman, Do politicians racially discriminate against constituents? A field experiment on state legislators, American Journal of Political Science, 2011 (October 2008; 2,747 replies to 4,859 emails), read 6 Nov 2026 in a course copy of the journal PDF research; Rep. Tina Kotek, Emails, calls and letters, Oregon State Legislature newsletter, 31 May 2013 (one office) primary.
IRS, IRS tax volunteers (updated 20 August 2026), Link and Learn Taxes, Publication 5378, Certification Tests: Getting Started (Rev. 11-2026) and Publication 5379, certification test FAQ (November 2026); NYC DCWP, Become a volunteer (updated October 2026), volunteer interest form and volunteer flyer (September 2026); all read 6 Nov 2026. primary
NYC Human Resources Administration, legal services for tenants, read 6 Nov 2026 primary; Legal Services NYC, How to get a lawyer under the Right to Counsel law, last updated 9 June 2025, read 6 Nov 2026 charity’s own figures; NYC Office of Civil Justice, annual report, fiscal year 2025, Figure 12 (provider-reported outcomes of fully represented cases closed in FY25), read 6 Nov 2026 primary.

The bills’ status was current on 5 Nov 2026 and moves fast. Oxfam’s next count is expected in January 2027. A rise in New York’s wage floor could start on 1 March 2027, if the Legislature approves.

Contest a fact, suggest something, or tell us what’s broken

If someone is in danger right now, don’t use this form. Call your local emergency number (911 in the US). For trafficking: 1-888-373-7888, or text 233733.

No name, no account. Your note goes into the site’s private records, nothing about your browser or connection is stored with it, and the email box is the only way we’d know who you are. The weekly review reads every note, re-reads the original source, and fixes the page if it should. A contested fact and its outcome are listed on Contested, in the review’s words, never yours.

No tracking on any link.Ticks stay on this device.Facts checked 5–6 Nov 2026.What changedContested