Middle Class

More from the Series

Blog Post

Strugglers: The New Poor of the 21st Century

March 05, 2018
Mohamed Bouazizi is the man whose protest sparked the Arab Spring in December 2010. Bouazizi was a typical “struggler,” as in the title of my keynote speech at the Australasian Aid conference several weeks ago: “Strugglers: This Century’s New Development Challe...
Blog Post

Increasing External Debt and Electoral Cycles in Emerging Markets: How Do They Affect Prospects for Long-Term Growth?

January 23, 2018
Recently, the World Bank published its latest Global Economic Prospects report, which highlights a welcomed cyclical recovery for all major regions of the world following recent slow growth. I was pleased to participate in a panel discussion at CGD analyzing the report’s finding...
ESSAY

Middle Class: Winners or Losers in a Globalized World?

August 02, 2017
Globalization is under attack in the West. The debate among pundits is no longer about whether globalization is to blame or not. It is about why globalization is now the bugaboo it has become. A common thread are changes, for the worse, in the economic and social standing of the Western middle class...
WORKING PAPER

Glimpsing the End of Economic History? Unconditional Convergence and the Missing Middle Income Trap - Working Paper 438

Sutirtha Roy et al.
September 29, 2016
This paper suggests a reinterpretation of global growth—encompassing notions of unconditional convergence and the middle income trap—in the past 50 years through the lens of growth theory. The last 20-30 years have been a golden era of convergence, challenging the new conventional w...