We forgot the middle class! Inequality underestimation in a changing Sub-Saharan Africa

Fabio Clementi, A. L. Dabalen, Vasco Molini () and Francesco Schettino
Additional contact information
A. L. Dabalen: World Bank

The Journal of Economic Inequality, 2020, vol. 18, issue 1, No 3, 45-70

Abstract: Abstract The creation of national middle classes and the changes in consumption patterns in many Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries suggest reconsidering the way welfare and consequently inequality is typically measured. Using only consumption to measure welfare can lead to an important loss of information regarding the real welfare of the top 10–20% of the welfare distribution that is generally referred as “middle class” in these countries. This paper proposes a method capable of correcting the middle-class part of the consumption distribution using information coming from the income distribution of the same surveys. Results from 6 SSA countries indicate an increase of about 20% in the Gini index.

Keywords: Middle class; Inequality; Sub-Saharan Africa; Consumption and income; Combined distribution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C46 D31 D63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10888-019-09432-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:joecin:v:18:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1007_s10888-019-09432-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/10888

DOI: 10.1007/s10888-019-09432-8

Access Statistics for this article

The Journal of Economic Inequality is currently edited by Stephen Jenkins

More articles in The Journal of Economic Inequality from Springer, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().