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The Developing World's Bulging (But Vulnerable) Middle Class, Martin Ravallion

Martin Ravallion

The “developing world’s middle class” is defined as those who live above the median poverty line of developing countries but are still poor by US standards; the “Western middle class” are those not poor by US standards. Although barely 80 million people in the developing world entered the Western middle class over 1990-2002, economic growth and global distributional shifts allowed an extra 1.2 billion people to join the developing world’s middle class. Four-fifths came from Asia, and half from China. Most remained fairly close to poverty, with incomes bunched up just above $2 a day. One in six people now …