Bourgeois boom: expanding middle class.

• Author: Mangu-Ward, Katherine
• Position: Citings - Brief article

THOSE WHO fear increasing inequality should take to heart a new study that finds the middle class is expanding, gaining about 70 million people a year in an unprecedented worldwide boom.

Better yet, says Jim O'Neill, global chief economist at Goldman Sachs and author of the study, the trend is likely to continue for at least 20 years, with the global middle class making annual gains of 90 million people a year by 2030. That mean a total of 2 billion newly > minted middle-class inhabitants of planet Earth in the next two decades. The study defined membership in the middle class as having an income of

between $6,000 and $30,000 a year in purchasing power parity terms (in current U.S. dollars and prices).

India and China are growth powerhouses, but even without those two...