Poverty, Income Inequality & Community Engagement

A fifth of Canadians live at the subsistence level. This is a look at that world, where the street is home, and where poor shelter, poor food, poor schools and poor health are the only certainties of life. Children, old people, the sick and the drifters are caught in it. It is a world filmed throughout Canada so that people who are not part of it can see it, think about it, and maybe help to change it.

We feel instinctively that societies with huge income gaps are somehow going wrong. Richard Wilkinson charts the hard data on economic inequality, and shows what gets worse when rich and poor are too far apart: real effects on health, lifespan, even such basic values as trust.