IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/soinre/v147y2020i1d10.1007_s11205-019-02144-6.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Multivariate Indicator to Compute Middle Class Population

Author

Listed:
  • Carlos Sánchez-González

    (University of Granada)

  • Rosa M. García-Fernández

    (University of Granada)

Abstract

This paper introduces a multivariate method to identify the middle classes that takes into account income, as a proxy of living standards, with other socio-economic features of individuals. To this aim, we have defined a synthetic indicator that considers scale, dummy and continuous variables. It is based on summarizing the sample information in a matrix data, the rows of which contain the social indicators related to each sample unit. The values of the proposed indicator will be used to identify who belongs to the middle class providing a closer idea about how social classes are formed. Examples for Spain, France and Italy illustrate our methodology. The data used, net equivalent disposable income, occupation and educational level, come from the European Survey of Income and Living Conditions for 2007, 2011 and 2014. The results for the period as a whole reveal that there has been an increase of the middle class but this rise is due mainly to the improvement of education and occupation categories to the detriment of the net equivalent disposable income.

Suggested Citation

  • Carlos Sánchez-González & Rosa M. García-Fernández, 2020. "A Multivariate Indicator to Compute Middle Class Population," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 147(1), pages 1-14, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:soinre:v:147:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1007_s11205-019-02144-6
    DOI: 10.1007/s11205-019-02144-6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11205-019-02144-6
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11205-019-02144-6?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hugh Gravelle & Matt Sutton, 2009. "Income, relative income, and self‐reported health in Britain 1979–2000," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(2), pages 125-145, February.
    2. Birdsall, N. & Graham, C. & Pettinato, S., 2000. "Stuck in the Tunnel: Is Globalization Muddling the Middle Class?," Papers 14, Brookings Institution - Working Papers.
    3. Walter Bossert & Satya R. Chakravarty & Conchita D’Ambrosio, 2019. "Multidimensional Poverty and Material Deprivation with Discrete Data," Themes in Economics, in: Satya R. Chakravarty (ed.), Poverty, Social Exclusion and Stochastic Dominance, pages 191-209, Springer.
    4. Frank A. Cowell & Maria-Pia Victoria-Feser, 2002. "Welfare Rankings in the Presence of Contaminated Data," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(3), pages 1221-1233, May.
    5. Joseph Deutsch & Jacques Silber, 2005. "Measuring Multidimensional Poverty: An Empirical Comparison Of Various Approaches," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 51(1), pages 145-174, March.
    6. Sabina Alkire & James Foster, 2011. "Understandings and misunderstandings of multidimensional poverty measurement," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 9(2), pages 289-314, June.
    7. Easterly, William, 2001. "The Middle Class Consensus and Economic Development," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 6(4), pages 317-335, December.
    8. Robert J. Barro, 1999. "Determinants of Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(S6), pages 158-183, December.
    9. Ravallion, Martin, 2010. "The Developing World's Bulging (but Vulnerable) Middle Class," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 38(4), pages 445-454, April.
    10. Jaya Krishnakumar & A. Nagar, 2008. "On Exact Statistical Properties of Multidimensional Indices Based on Principal Components, Factor Analysis, MIMIC and Structural Equation Models," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 86(3), pages 481-496, May.
    11. Steven Pressman, 2007. "The Decline of the Middle Class: An International Perspective," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(1), pages 181-200, March.
    12. Cristina Blanco Pérez & Xavier Ramos, 2010. "Polarization And Health," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 56(1), pages 171-185, March.
    13. Andreas Peichl & Thilo Schaefer & Christoph Scheicher, 2010. "Measuring Richness And Poverty: A Micro Data Application To Europe And Germany," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 56(3), pages 597-619, September.
    14. Desai, Meghnad & Shah, Anup, 1988. "An Econometric Approach to the Measurement of Poverty," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 40(3), pages 505-522, September.
    15. Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo, 2008. "What Is Middle Class about the Middle Classes around the World?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 22(2), pages 3-28, Spring.
    16. GUIO Anne-Catherine & FUSCO Alessio & MARLIER Eric, 2009. "A European Union Approach to Material Deprivation using EU-SILC and Eurobarometer data," IRISS Working Paper Series 2009-19, IRISS at CEPS/INSTEAD.
    17. Markus M. Grabka & Joachim R. Frick, 2008. "The Shrinking German Middle Class: Signs of Long-Term Polarization in Disposable Income?," Weekly Report, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research, vol. 4(4), pages 21-27.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. You He & Alex de Sherbinin & Guoqing Shi & Haibin Xia, 2022. "The Economic Spatial Structure Evolution of Urban Agglomeration under the Impact of High-Speed Rail Construction: Is There a Difference between Developed and Developing Regions?," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(9), pages 1-17, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sofía Plata, 2020. "Impacto de la estructura fiscal en el tamaño de la clase media," Documentos de Trabajo (working papers) 0920, Department of Economics - dECON.
    2. Guillermo Cruces & Luis Felipe López Calva & Diego Battistón, 2011. "Down and Out or Up and In? Polarization-Based Measures of the Middle Class for Latin America," CEDLAS, Working Papers 0113, CEDLAS, Universidad Nacional de La Plata.
    3. Jean-Philippe BERROU & Matthieu CLÉMENT & François COMBARNOUS & Dominique DARBON & Yves-André FAURE & Éric ROUGIER, 2019. "L’essor des classes moyennes dans les pays en développement et émergents : une étude comparative des enjeux d’identification, de caractérisation et de politiques publiques," Working Paper d25da1cf-d9d8-4336-9930-b, Agence française de développement.
    4. Mariam Shahzadi & Muhammad Faraz Riaz & Sofia Anwar & Samia Nasreen, 2017. "How unequal is the size of middle class in the rural urban areas of Punjab province," International Journal of Social Economics, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 44(2), pages 253-266, February.
    5. Arjun Jayadev & Rahul Lahoti & Sanjay Reddy, 2015. "The Middle Muddle: Conceptualizing and Measuring the Global Middle Class," Courant Research Centre: Poverty, Equity and Growth - Discussion Papers 193, Courant Research Centre PEG.
    6. Alberto Batinti & Joan Costa‐Font, 2020. "Do economic recessions “squeeze the middle class”?," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(3), pages 335-355, November.
    7. Chun, Natalie & Hasan, Rana & Rahman, Muhammad Habibur & Ulubaşoğlu, Mehmet A., 2016. "The role of middle class in democratic diffusion," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 536-548.
    8. Vasiliy A. Anikin & Yulia P. Lezhnina & Svetlana V. Mareeva & Ekaterina D. Slobodenyuk & Nataliya N. Tikhonovà, 2016. "Income Stratification: Key Approaches and Their Application to Russia," HSE Working papers WP BRP 02/PSP/2016, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    9. Walter Sosa-Escudero & Sergio Petralia, 2011. "Anatomy of Distributive Changes in Argentina," Chapters, in: Werner Baer & David Fleischer (ed.), The Economies of Argentina and Brazil, chapter 10, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    10. Alain Desdoigts & Fernando Jaramillo, 2020. "Bounded Learning by Doing, Inequality, and Multi-Sector Growth: A Middle-Class Perspective," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 36, pages 198-219, April.
    11. Florencia Torche & Luis F. Lopez-Calva, 2013. "Stability and Vulnerability of the Latin American Middle Class," Oxford Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(4), pages 409-435, December.
    12. Ravallion, Martin, 2010. "The Developing World's Bulging (but Vulnerable) Middle Class," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 38(4), pages 445-454, April.
    13. C�line Bonnefond & Matthieu Cl�ment & Fran�ois Combarnous, 2015. "In search of the elusive Chinese urban middle class: an exploratory analysis," Post-Communist Economies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(1), pages 41-59, March.
    14. Abebe Shimeles & Mthuli Ncube, 2015. "The Making of the Middle-Class in Africa: Evidence from DHS Data," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(2), pages 178-193, February.
    15. Oasis Kodila-Tedika & Simplice A. Asongu & Julio Mukendi Kayembe, 2016. "Middle Class in Africa: Determinants and Consequences," International Economic Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(4), pages 527-549, October.
    16. Remes Sami, 2019. "Middle class decline in Finland 1995-2012 : Decomposition and directional mobility," Working Papers 1925, Tampere University, Faculty of Management and Business, Economics.
    17. Durr-e-Nayab, 2011. "Estimating the Middle Class in Pakistan," The Pakistan Development Review, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, vol. 50(1), pages 1-28.
    18. Gustavo Canavire‐Bacarreza & Michael Jetter & Marcos Robles, 2018. "When Does Economic Growth Reduce Poverty and Strengthen the Middle Class? A State‐Level, Sector‐Specific Analysis of Peru," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 84(4), pages 1067-1087, April.
    19. Andy Sumner, 2012. "The Buoyant Billions: How “Middle Class†Are the New Middle Classes in Developing Countries? (And Why Does It Matter?)," Working Papers id:5169, eSocialSciences.
    20. Loayza, Norman & Rigolini, Jamele & Llorente, Gonzalo, 2012. "Do middle classes bring about institutional reforms?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 116(3), pages 440-444.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:soinre:v:147:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1007_s11205-019-02144-6. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.