IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/lis/liswps/641.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Global Middle Class Is More Promise than Reality

Author

Listed:
  • Rakesh Kochhar

Abstract

The first decade of the 21st century witnessed an historic reduction in global poverty and a near doubling of the number of people who could be considered middle income. But the emergence of a truly global middle class is still more promise than reality. In 2011, a majority of the world’s population (56%) continued to live a low-income existence, compared with just 13% that could be considered middle income. And though there was growth in the middle-income population from 2001 to 2011, the rise in prosperity was concentrated in certain regions of the globe, namely China, South America and Eastern Europe. The middle class barely expanded in India and Southeast Asia, Africa, and Central America.

Suggested Citation

  • Rakesh Kochhar, 2015. "A Global Middle Class Is More Promise than Reality," LIS Working papers 641, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    • Handle: RePEc:lis:liswps:641
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.lisdatacenter.org/wps/liswps/641.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Branko Milanovic, 2002. "True World Income Distribution, 1988 and 1993: First Calculation Based on Household Surveys Alone," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(476), pages 51-92, January.
    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. Mavrozacharakis, Emmanouil & Dimari, Georgia, 2018. "The Decommissioning of the Middle Class," MPRA Paper 88462, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Henning Melber, 2017. "The African middle class(es) – in the middle of what?," Review of African Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(151), pages 142-154, January.
    3. Bazillier, Rémi & Héricourt, Jérôme & Ligonnière, Samuel, 2021. "Structure of income inequality and household leverage: Cross-country causal evidence," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    4. Vyacheslav Bobkov & Peter Herrmann & Igor Kolmakov & Yelena Odintsova, 2018. "Two-Criterion Model of the Russian Society Stratification by Income and Housing Security," Economy of region, Centre for Economic Security, Institute of Economics of Ural Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences, vol. 1(4), pages 1061-1075.
    5. Rémi Bazillier & Jérôme Héricourt & Samuel Ligonnière, 2017. "Structure of Income Inequality and Household Leverage: Theory and Cross-Country Evidence," Working Papers 2017-01, CEPII research center.
    6. Océane Blomme & Jérôme Héricourt, 2023. "Inequality, Current Account Imbalances and Middle Incomes," Working Papers 2023-11, CEPII research center.
    7. Eric Rougier & Jean‐Philippe Berrou & Matthieu Clément & François Combarnous & Dominique Darbon, 2021. "Should we call it a (middle) class? A socio‐economic exploration of the Vietnamese middle‐income group," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(8), pages 1321-1345, November.
    8. Orlando Zambrano Roman, 2020. "An emerging but vulnerable middle class: a description of trends in Asia and the Pacific," Asia-Pacific Sustainable Development Journal, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), vol. 27(1), pages 1-20, June.
    9. Greenacre, Luke & Akbar, Skye, 2019. "The impact of payment method on shopping behaviour among low income consumers," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 87-93.
    10. Vyacheslav Bobkov & Igor Kolmakov, 2017. "Identifying the Social Structure and the Inequality in Monetary Income of Russian Population," Economy of region, Centre for Economic Security, Institute of Economics of Ural Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences, vol. 1(4), pages 971-984.

    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. Eric Gaisie, 2017. "Living standards in pre-independent Ghana: evidence from household budgets," HHB Working Papers Series 7, The Historical Household Budgets Project.
    2. Kaika, Dimitra & Zervas, Efthimios, 2013. "The environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) theory. Part B: Critical issues," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 1403-1411.
    3. Bussolo Maurizio & de Hoyos Rafael E. & Medvedev Denis & van der Mensbrugghe Dominique, 2012. "Global Growth and Distribution: China, India, and the Emergence of a Global Middle Class," Journal of Globalization and Development, De Gruyter, vol. 2(2), pages 1-29, January.
    4. Sanjay Reddy & Rahul Lahoti & Arjun Jayadev, 2015. "The global consumption and income project: An introduction and preliminary findings," WIDER Working Paper Series 003, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    5. Muhammad Shahbaz & Mita Bhattacharya & Mantu Kumar Mahalik, 2017. "Finance and income inequality in Kazakhstan: evidence since transition with policy suggestions," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(52), pages 5337-5351, November.
    6. William E. Griffiths and Gholamreza Hajargasht, 2012. "GMM Estimation of Mixtures from Grouped Data:," Department of Economics - Working Papers Series 1148, The University of Melbourne.
    7. Modalsli, Jørgen, 2011. "Inequality and growth in the very long run: inferring inequality from data on social groups," Memorandum 11/2011, Oslo University, Department of Economics.
    8. Miguel Niño‐Zarazúa & Laurence Roope & Finn Tarp, 2017. "Global Inequality: Relatively Lower, Absolutely Higher," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 63(4), pages 661-684, December.
    9. repec:cuf:journl:y:2014:v:15:i:2:calderon:serven is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Malte LÜBKER, 2004. "Globalization and perceptions of social inequality," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 143(1-2), pages 91-128, March.
    11. José Gabriel Palma, 2011. "Forum 2011," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 42(1), pages 87-153, January.
    12. Arne Bigsten & Jörgen Levin, 2001. "Growth, Income Distribution, and Poverty," WIDER Working Paper Series DP2001-129, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    13. Fay, Marianne & Leipziger, Danny & Wodon, Quentin & Yepes, Tito, 2005. "Achieving child-health-related Millennium Development Goals: The role of infrastructure," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 33(8), pages 1267-1284, August.
    14. Paul Johnson & Chris Papageorgiou, 2020. "What Remains of Cross-Country Convergence?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 58(1), pages 129-175, March.
    15. Basu, Kaushik, 2006. "Globalization, poverty, and inequality: What is the relationship? What can be done?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 34(8), pages 1361-1373, August.
    16. Camelia Minoiu & Sanjay Reddy, 2014. "Kernel density estimation on grouped data: the case of poverty assessment," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 12(2), pages 163-189, June.
    17. Masato Okamoto, 2014. "Interpolating the Lorenz Curve: Methods to Preserve Shape and Remain Consistent with the Concentration Curves for Components," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 60(2), pages 349-384, June.
    18. Daniele Checchi, 2001. "Education, Inequality and Income Inequality," STICERD - Distributional Analysis Research Programme Papers 52, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.
    19. Yo Chul Choi & David Hummels & Chong Xiang, 2006. "Explaining Import Variety and Quality: The Role of the Income Distribution," NBER Working Papers 12531, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Adriana Marina, 2000. "Economic convergence of the first and second moment in the provinces of Argentina," Estudios de Economia, University of Chile, Department of Economics, vol. 27(2 Year 20), pages 259-277, December.
    21. Almas Heshmati, 2006. "Continental And Sub-Continental Income Inequality," The IUP Journal of Applied Economics, IUP Publications, vol. 0(1), pages 7-52, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:lis:liswps:641. 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: Piotr Paradowski (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lisprlu.html .

    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.