Poverty in America runs through four families living at or below the federal poverty line, filmed in Chicago's western suburbs and west side neighborhoods, along the Gulf Coast, and in North Carolina. The film follows people who hold jobs, raise children, and still cannot close the gap between what they earn and what it costs to live, using their daily routines rather than statistics to make the case. There is no narrator standing outside the story passing judgment; the families speak for themselves about rent, groceries, and the calculations that go into keeping a household running on too little money. The geographic spread matters here, since it shows poverty as a condition that crosses regions, races, and family structures rather than one that belongs to a single city or stereotype. English and Spanish captioning make the film accessible to a wider audience than the subjects themselves usually reach. The point is simple and stated plainly: millions of working Americans live below the line, and the film asks viewers to recognize what that actually looks like.