Decomposing World Income Distribution: Does The World Have A Middle Class?

Milanović, Branko

doi:10.1111/1475-4991.00046

Cited by 201 publications

(120 citation statements)

References 15 publications

(12 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

100

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…In particular, the middle class is traditionally defined either as the set of people owning an income within an interval from 75% to 125 % of the median (e.g., Thurow, 1987), or as belonging to the second, third and fourth quintiles of the income distribution (Easterly, 2001), or as living inside common bounds across countries (Milanovic & Yitzhaki, 2002), or possessing a daily revenue varying over an income interval (Banerjee & Duflo, 2008), among others. By contrast, following the recommendation of DER (2004, p. 1760), we consider that social groups have only a demarcating role.…”

Section: Number and Size Of Groupsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multidimensional Polarization, Social Classes, and Societal Conflict: Evidence from Medieval Towns

Challier

2016

RES

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The paper focuses on the nature of a population distribution (polarized or not) and its possible influence on societal conflict. Despite theoretical and empirical studies on the link between population's polarization and social conflict, the relationship remains in question. Up to now, the role of a multidimensional polarization has been neglected and the determination of social classes by their roles and functions (and not by their resource level) has been ignored. To extend the research, we first define a multidimensional polarization index and approach it empirically through quantitative and qualitative data (often textual data) over a very long period in accordance with the historiographical method. First, this paper refutes the stereotype of a medieval French urban population polarized between rich and poor. Second, over the same period, we build a database of the intensity and occurrence of societal conflict on a sample of twenty-four French towns. The paper finds that over time the low initial degree of the population's polarization continued to decline while societal violence was increasing. Third, whereas polarization is excluded as a determinant of societal conflict, the inter-group heterogeneity measure (or social distance) highlights some relationships. The results show that societal upheavals may be quite connected with the social distance index defined between the high and middle classes; moreover, this social unrest may be greatly related with the index defined between the high and the low classes. By contrast, the results find an outbreak of societal conflicts when social distances between the middle and low classes decrease.

show abstract

Section: Number and Size Of Groupsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multidimensional Polarization, Social Classes, and Societal Conflict: Evidence from Medieval Towns

Challier

2016

RES

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Alternatively, a global category of middle class can be defined as households with an income level between that of an average Brazilian household and that from Italy (Milanovic and Yitzhaki, 2002). This global group of households can have a good deal of commonality.…”

Section: The Global Middle Classmentioning

confidence: 99%

Globalisation and an Emerging Global Middle Class

Das

2009

Economic Affairs

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Globalisation has expanded the size of the global middle class. This expansion will change consumption patterns and shift the balance of spending power to middle‐income economies. Rapid growth rates of the middle class in China and India have played a decisive role in creating the middle‐income bulge. By 2030 the global middle class has been projected to grow to two billion. It is of note that a large middle class was also created during the first era of globalisation.

show abstract

“…This has mostly involved using additive and Generalized entropy indices -see, for instance, Bourguignon (1979), Cowell (1980), Foster and Shneyerov (1999), Mookherjee and Shorrocks (1982), Shorrocks (1980), Shorrocks (1984), Schwarze (1996) and Zandvakili (1999). Decompositions of the Gini and rank-dependent inequality indices are investigated in Dagum (1997), Deutsch and Silber (1999a), Deutsch and Silber (1999b), Milanovic and Yitzhaki (2002), Sastry and Kelkar (1994), Tsui (1998) and Yitzhaki and Lerman (1991). A money-metric cost-of-inequality approach to decomposing inequality across subpopulations is derived in Blackorby, Donaldson, and Auersperg (1981), Duclos and Lambert (2000) and Ebert (1999).…”

Section: 8mentioning

confidence: 99%