A Global Middle Class Is More Promise than Reality

Rakesh Kochhar

No 641, LIS Working papers from LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg

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.

Pages: 97 pages
Date: 2015-08
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Published in Pew Research Center, Washington, D.C, July 2015.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.lisdatacenter.org/wps/liswps/641.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lis:liswps:641

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LIS Working papers from LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Piotr Paradowski ().