Middle class4/28/2023 ![]() This may shed light on certain aspects of the Chinese regime’s assertive behaviour and its real level of support.īleakest of all is that the recovery prospects for the global middle class are not good. There are now more people in China among the middle and upper-middle classes than among the ranks of the poor and the lower-middle class. The levels of poverty have not deteriorated. Pew calculates that the number of middle-income Chinese has fallen by 10 million –there were already 504 million of them prior to the pandemic– and 30 million people have joined the ranks of those on low incomes (US$2-10 a day). The number of people classified as poor, after a decade of successfully reducing poverty, with some 49 million people escaping the situation every year, increased by 131 million in 2020 owing to the recession, climbing to 803 million, or 10.4%, South-East Asia and sub-Saharan Africa are particularly affected, whereas the forecasts predicted it would have fallen by 8.7% had it not been for the pandemic.Ĭhina is the only large economy that did not suffer a recession over the course of the last year, and in the first half of 2021 it is recording spectacular growth. The vast majority of the wealthiest –489 million out of 593 million– live in developed economies and many of them are slipping down to lower rungs of the ladder, meaning that the true loss is even greater. In 2020 (the figures will be greater now that the pandemic has extended into 2021) there were 54 million fewer people in this middle class, 36 million fewer among those on upper-middle incomes and 62 million fewer on high incomes. Prior to COVID-19 it was estimated that this global middle class, which is or was changing the world, had grown from 899 million to 1.38 billion between 20 (out of a global population of more than 7.7 billion). The poor are defined as those living on less than US$2 a day, or US$2,920 per annum for a family of four. The highest incomes are at least US$50 a day. Middle class means living on an income of US$10-20 a day, or US$14,600-29,200 per annum for a family of four. They focus on daily and annual income, although other factors such as type of education, employment, housing and so on may also be used. Let us start with the definitions employed by Pew, which are consistent with other international centres and organisations, the figures used in the research being based on World Bank data. The COVID-19 downturn curbed growth in the global middle class, increased poverty sharply in 2020. But even developed economies have not been immune from the setback, which is likely to have sweeping social and political consequences, with a negative impact on global consumption and giving impetus to the rise of identity-based populist and authoritarian movements. The country that has been hardest hit is India, accounting for 60% of this social reverse, having lost a third of its middle class (with a drop from 99 million to 66 million). And, far from recovering, it seems likely that their fortunes will stall. ![]() According to a Pew Research Center report, after a decade of progress on both fronts the global middle class has shrunk by 54 million people relative to the forecasts for 2020, compounded by the reduction in the upper middle class and the wealthiest. Among the destructive effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the greatest is its worldwide decline and the growth of those in poverty, except in China. Photo: Blake Wheeler great revolution of recent decades has been the powerful emergence of a significant global middle class. The fall and stagnation of the global middle class.
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