A new global middle class?

Branko Milanovic, lead economist in the research unit in the World Bank, is sceptical about the growth of a global middle class. In an interview with the Toronto Globe and Mail he says that even the recent years of strong economic growth will not automatically lead to a larger middle class. In Latin America or the post-Communist countries it might be a case of a middle class re-emerging rather than a new one being created. He also argues that the emerging developing world middle class is based on more casual forms of labour than earlier middle classes.

Despite his current pessimism he is more upbeat than in his 2005 book, Worlds Apart. That argued that the 1980-2000 period was bleak for the creation of a new middle class.