[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/57082399 w=500&h=375]

Boston-based GlobalPost has gone live with a major new project. “The Great Divide: Exploring Income Inequality” examines the growing gap between rich and poor in the United States and compares it with other countries.

The project contains plenty of data and interactive features to drive home its findings and to make it possible for users to learn about where they live. For instance, I discovered that income distribution in Greater Boston is about the same as it is in Ecuador.

The video above documents life in gritty Bridgeport, Conn., and how it compares with Greenwich, its wealthy counterpart 15 miles southwest on I-95. Those communities, in turn, are used to demonstrate a similar divide between rich and poor neighborhoods in Bangkok.

The project, funded by the Ford Foundation, is the product of six months of work, according to an announcement from Charles Sennott, executive editor and co-founder of GlobalPost. He writes:

Our hope is that by drawing these comparisons, we might hold a mirror up for our audience to see just how wide the gap between poor and rich has become in America. As our reporting teams have discovered, inequality comes at a great social cost and we hope this series will reveal why this issue should matter to us all.

The series is a serious, in-depth examination of one of the most important issues of our time. It also shows how a philanthropic organization like the Ford Foundation can help fund public-interest journalism at a time when for-profit news organizations are struggling.