CHAPTER 93 The Emerging Bourgeoisie1
For Karl Marx, “the bourgeoisie . . . has played a most revolutionary part” in history. He is right. In the past two decades, the new middle class (NMC) has surged forward, silently producing a revolution within emerging markets in wealth creation and in lifestyle. By and large, they are a product of growth.
Who Are They?
There is no best definition of the NMC; it all depends on what the objective is. US$2 a day is commonly accepted as the poverty line in developing nations; beyond this, people join the middle-class in the sense they have moved out of poverty. My old friend, Homi Kharas (formerly with the World Bank and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, a US think tank), had promoted the definition of today’s global NMC as households with disposable income (or daily expenditure) of US$10 to US$100 a day (RM30 to RM300) per person at 2005 purchasing power parity prices (i.e., their domestic buying power at 2005 prices).
Two recent reports tell their story: “Global Trends 2030,” just published by the Paris-based European Union Institute for Security Studies (ISS), quoted in the Financial Times,2 and “Perspectives on Global Development 2012—Social Cohesion in a Shifting World” by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (the rich world’s think tank, also based in Paris).3 According to them, the NMC is global and on current trends, its members will rise from 2 billion in 2013 (split about 50–50 between developed ...