Adios to poverty, hola to consumption.

• Author: Williams, J. Edgar
• Position: Brief article

Focusing on Brazil and Mexico, which together account for half of Latin America's 560 million people, this article from The Economist examines the growth of the region's middle class. That growth has admittedly had its sporadic ups and downs since the 1940s. For much of that period, through the 1970s, government employment and state-led industrialization created an unsustainable increase in the middle class, especially when the 1982 debt crisis caused low growth and high inflation. The early 1990s later saw a short-lived burst of growth due to capital inflows and over-valued exchange rates. Now, however, following devaluations and economic reforms leading to more open markets, that growth appears to have achieved a firmer footing.

The Economist acknowledges the subjective nature of the term "middle class," which by developed country standards might be regarded as "lower middle class." Even so, Latin America is no longer a region with a large, poor majority and a small, affluent elite. Many members of this emerging middle class have risen from the "informal...