Ten Lives

An exploration of how money - and the lack of it - shapes our lives, told through the stories of ten people, written and illustrated by the Pulitzer Prize-winning data journalist, Mona Chalabi

How much money in the bank is enough? To live a good life? To protect the people you love in an emergency?

Anna has a comfortable life in a beautiful house thanks to her husband (well, his parents really) until he suddenly asks for a divorce. Hunter is an army veteran, feeling ashamed about claiming disability benefits. Then there’s Levi, who is trying to pay off his debts from a gambling addiction, one social media video at a time. And Christian, stifled by his job at an Amazon warehouse before a union organizing effort offers a way out for his comrades and his young kids. Ten people, ten different incomes, all of them afraid for their futures.

For five years, data journalist Mona Chalabi followed them all, documenting how wealth shaped their feelings, their choices, their identities, and their insecurities. She researched the data behind their taxes, groceries, inheritances, and so much more to understand the systems that keep people stuck. But then, she too found herself facing the same fears, when her mother’s sudden illness and subsequent medical bills threatened her own financial safety and made the questions she had been writing about all too real.

Interweaving her own story with those of her interviewees and illustrated throughout with the data visualizations for which Chalabi is renowned, Ten Lives asks how much wealth it takes to feel - and be - safe. It explores how difficult it is for us to be honest and open about what we have and argues that until we get better at it, we will never be able to address the underlying problems that drive inequality and insecurity for us all.