While Jim Coyle focused on poverty and may have missed the gradient issue this
time around, I for one am not too dissapointed. As inequality increases, the
people on the bottom probably deserve MORE of our attention. As long as we don't
fotget to say: "By the way, you people across the spectrum will suffer as well
as society fragments and services deteriorate!

By the way British researchers -- see "The Widening Gap" published by University
of Bristol Press (available through http://www.amazon.co.uk) -- emphasize
poverty rather than the gradient as well.

Dennis

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   Where a great proportion of the people are suffered to languish
        in helpless misery,
   That country must be ill-policed and wretchedly governed:
   A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization.

   -- Dr. Samuel Johnson, 1770
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Dennis Raphael, Ph.D.
Associate Professor and Associate Director,
Masters of Health Science Program in Health Promotion
Department of Public Health Sciences
Graduate Department of Community Health
University of Toronto
McMurrich Building, Room 101
Toronto, Ontario, CANADA M5S 1A8
voice:    (416) 978-7567
fax: (416) 978-2087
e-mail:   [log in to unmask]