Gini In the Time of Covid-19
Emmy Award winning documentary film currently airing on PBS
View the film trailer.
The Covid-19 pandemic has dramatically unveiled the negative impact of large inequalities in the United States. While the Covid-19 Pandemic has hit different groups in very different ways, the majority of Americans living standards had been stagnant for decades prior to March 2020. Prospects for their future and that of their children looked grim much before the pandemic struck. Around 20 percent of the US total population has been reaping most of the benefits of the sustained growth of the last decade, while for the majority of Americans their livelihoods did not improve much. Inequalities have been building up since the 1980s, and the US has become one of the most unequal countries among high income nations. Social mobility is now lower in the United States than in many European countries and has contributed to eroding the trust between different population segments and has fueled major frustrations with traditional institutions. In this context, Covid-19 laid in the open pre-existing vulnerabilities of a large part of the American population such as job insecurity, difficulties in paying for health care and quality education, food insecurity, and a patchy social protection system that struggled to respond to the multiple needs of the population in time of crisis. Paradoxically, the pandemic may serve as a wakeup call to address inequalities in the US. Politicians, civil society leaders, and even some of the wealthiest Americans, increasingly recognize the very negative impact of inequalities on the long term prospect for the US economy and for the wellbeing of society.
This documentary explains the developments that brought the US to this situation and how the Covid-19 crisis reveals the dramatic impact of inequality on society and the economy. The film explores the paradoxical idea that by exposing how negative high inequalities are for the economy, Covid-19 might provide an opportunity to drastically change US policies, as the new deal did in the 1930’s.