You'd be surprised how poor some are The International Labour Organisation has identified a rapid growth of 'the developing middle class' – a group earning between $4 and $13 a day
By Paul Mason
The Guardian, Monday 20 January 2014
When a million people swarmed on to the streets of Brazil last June there was consensus that the protest
was a phenomenon of the "new middle class" – squeezed by corruption and
failing infrastructure. As the Thai protests continue, these too are
labelled middle class: office workers staging flashmobs in their neat,
pressed shirts.
But what does middle class mean in the developing
world? About 3 billion people earn less than two dollars a day, but
figures for the rest are hazy. Now, fresh research by the International
Labour Organisation (ILO) economists
shows in detail what's been happening to the workforce of the global
south during 25 years of globalisation: it is becoming more stratified –
with the rapid growth of what they term "the developing middle class" –
a group on between $4 and $13 a day. This group has grown from 600
million to 1.4 billion; if you include around 300 million on above $13 a
day, that's now 41% of the workforce, and on target to be over 50% by
2017. But in world terms they're not really middle class at all. That
$13 a day upper limit corresponds roughly to the poverty line in the US
in 2005. So what's going on?
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