Princeton Simulates Poverty in “Realville”

Posted on November 21, 2008
Filed Under News, The Daily Prereq, Weird. Wacky. Wild. | By Jessica Gross

What better way to understand poverty than by playing pretend?

Last year, Princeton ran a month-long simulation called “Realville.” Participants were assigned families and budgets — and even given paper money! Starting tomorrow, you can follow Realville: The Sequel.

Maybe this is a good idea. After all, Barbara Ehrenreich wrote Nickel and Dimed — a super book about living on minimum wage — after undercover reporting as a waitress, maid, and Wal-Mart employee. But she was actually living on those wages, not pretending to, and for way more than a month. Using Monopoly money and then going back to your Princeton dorm room (with, by the way, free laundry) is a little different.

Then again, it didn’t take long for fake prisoners and guards in the Stanford prison experiment to get carried away.

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