Middle class: India - Revision history

Jyoti at 09:20, 8 April 2025

2025-04-08T09:20:03Z

Jyoti at 09:15, 8 April 2025

2025-04-08T09:15:57Z

Pdewan: /* India has no middle class */

2025-03-26T08:53:44Z

‎India has no middle class

Pdewan: /* India has no middle class */

2022-11-30T21:07:30Z

‎India has no middle class

Pdewan at 15:41, 2 March 2014

2014-03-02T15:41:23Z

Pdewan: Created page with "{| class="wikitable" |- |colspan="0"|
This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content.
You can help by converting..."

2014-03-02T15:40:22Z

Created page with "{| class="wikitable" |- |colspan="0"|<div style="font-size:100%"> This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content.<br/>You can help by converting..."

New page

{| class="wikitable"
|-
|colspan="0"|<div style="font-size:100%">
This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content.<br/>You can help by converting these articles into an encyclopaedia-style entry,<br />deleting portions of the kind nor mally not used in encyclopaedia entries.<br/>Please also fill in missing details; put categories, headings and sub-headings;<br/>and combine this with other articles on exactly the same subject.<br/>

Readers will be able to edit existing articles and post new articles directly <br/> on their online archival encyclopædia only after its formal launch.

See [[examples]] and a tutorial.</div>
|}

[[Category:India|M]]
[[Category:Development|M]]
[[Category:Name|Alphabet]]
[[Category:Name|Alphabet]]

==India has no middle class==

‘Those Earning Over $10 A Day Constitute The Top 5%’
Rukmini Shrinivasan

[http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=CAP&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW&AW=1393708348876 Times of India]

New Delhi: Could the Great Indian Middle Class be the Great Indian Mythical Class? A proposed new international definition of what constitutes the middle class in a developing country has thrown up a startling conclusion by global standards, India has no middle class.
Noted economist Nancy Birdsall, president of the Center for Global Development, has proposed a new definition of the middle class for developing countries in a forthcoming World Bank publication, Equity in a Globalizing World. Birdsall defines the middle class in the developing world to include people with an income above $10 day, but excluding the top 5% of that country. By this definition, India even urban India alone has no middle class; everyone at over $10 a day is in the top 5% of the country.

This is a combination both of the depth of India’s poverty and its inequality. China had no middle class in 1990, but by 2005, had a small urban middle class (3% of the population). South Africa (7%), Russia (30%) and Brazil (19%) all had sizable middle classes in 2005.

While many economists have in the past as well attempted to define the middle class, Birdsall puts into monetary terms the broader concept of what a middle class really is, as opposed to merely counting the middle third of a country. In socio-political terms, the middle class is traditionally that segment of society with a degree of economic security that allows it to uphold the rule of law, invest and desire stability. They do not, unlike those defined as rich, depend on inheritances or other non-productive sources of income.

Birdsall argues that while the equivalent of $10 per day in 2005 as a lower limit is on the low side by the standards of industrialized countries, somewhere around $10 a day per person household members are able to care about and save for the future and to have aspirations for a better life for themselves as well as their children because they feel reasonably secure economically.
OECD countries define their poverty lines as 50% of median income which works out in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) terms to about $30 day. In US the poverty line for a single individual in 2008 was $29 per day and for each individual in a four-person household was about $14 per day.

However, people in developing countries living on even $10 a day still have extremely low social indicators. Economist Lant Pritchett has shown that infant mortality of households in the richest quintile in Bolivia was 32 and Ghana 58 per 1,000. Fewer than 25% of people in the richest quintile in India complete 9 grades of school, Pritchett showed. “An upper limit of the 95th percentile, while on the high side, is just about sufficient to exclude the countrys richest,” Birdsall adds.

[[File: middle class | |frame|500px]]

[[File: middle class 1 | |frame|500px]]

@@ Line 53: / Line 53: @@
  Which means it’s possible for a household that is value-conscious while buying groceries to splurge on a car. Or a salaried professional who looks for bargains when hiring an electrician is fine with planning an extravagant vacation. At least part of it is because of debt. People are saving less, borrowing more. And the scale of change is striking.
-  If you think about it, is it likely — not right or wrong, just likely — that previous generations of middle class Indians would have thought of paying 1.45-crore interest on an 80-lakh loan (assuming a 20-lakh down payment) as a practical way to fund their dream home? Probably not. But it made sense to a lot of people over the past few years because the hope was that their incomes and wealth would keep growing as the economy kept growing.
+ If you think about it, is it likely — not right or wrong, just likely — that previous generations of middle class Indians would have thought of paying 1.45-crore interest on an 80-lakh loan (assuming a 20-lakh down payment) as a practical way to fund their dream home? Probably not. But it made sense to a lot of people over the past few years because the hope was that their incomes and wealth would keep growing as the economy kept growing.
  Till that consistent promise of upward mobility holds up, the middle class will keep growing in numbers but may not grow quite as much in terms of sustainable spending capacity.
@@ Line 107: / Line 107: @@
 MIDDLE CLASS: INDIA]]
 [[Category:Pages with broken file links|MIDDLE CLASS: INDIAMIDDLE CLASS: INDIA
 MIDDLE CLASS: INDIA]]

@@ Line 9: / Line 9: @@
 |}
-[[Category:India|M]]
-[[Category:Development|M]]
-[[Category:Name|Alphabet]]
-[[Category:Name|Alphabet]]
+=Its size=
 =Points of view=
@@ Line 55: / Line 98: @@
 MIDDLE CLASS: INDIA]]
 [[Category:Pages with broken file links|MIDDLE CLASS: INDIA
 MIDDLE CLASS: INDIA]]

@@ Line 18: / Line 18: @@
 ‘Those Earning Over $10 A Day Constitute The Top 5%’
 Rukmini Shrinivasan
-[http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=CAP&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW&AW=1393708348876  Times of  India]
+[http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=CAP&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW&AW=1393708348876  Times of  India] 2005 figures
@@ Line 46: / Line 47: @@
 [[Category:Name|ALPHABET
 MIDDLE CLASS: INDIA]]
 [[Category:Pages with broken file links|MIDDLE CLASS: INDIA]]

@@ Line 14: / Line 14: @@
 [[Category:Name|Alphabet]]
 ==India has no middle class==
@@ Line 38: / Line 39: @@
 [[File: middle class 1.png | |frame|500px]]

← Older revision		Revision as of 15:41, 2 March 2014
Line 35:		Line 35:


−	[[File: middle class \| \|frame\|500px]]	+	[[File: middle class.png \| \|frame\|500px]]

−	[[File: middle class 1 \| \|frame\|500px]]	+	[[File: middle class 1.png \| \|frame\|500px]]

Middle class: India - Revision history

Jyoti at 09:20, 8 April 2025

Jyoti at 09:15, 8 April 2025

Pdewan: /* India has no middle class */

Pdewan: /* India has no middle class */

Pdewan at 15:41, 2 March 2014

Pdewan: Created page with "{| class="wikitable" |- |colspan="0"| This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content.You can help by converting..."

Pdewan: Created page with "{| class="wikitable" |- |colspan="0"|
This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content.
You can help by converting..."