When a single mother in Toronto borrows a $300 loan at RadCred to cover an unexpected childcare expense, paying back $390 two weeks later, she enters a financial arrangement that economists might explain through interest rates and market demand. But sociology reveals a different story: one of structural inequality, social exclusion, and the monetization of poverty itself.
Payday loans in Canada represent far more than emergency credit. They function as visible markers of deepening social stratification, where approximately 1.9 million Canadians annually access these high-cost …