In the light of the economic, political and social significance of the middle class for South Africa's emerging democracy, we critically examine contrasting conceptualisations of social class. We compare four rival approaches to empirical estimation of class: an occupational skill measure, a...

In a polarised and highly unequal country such as South Africa, it is unlikely that a definition of the middle class that is based on an income threshold will adequately capture the political and social meanings of being middle class. We therefore propose a multi-dimensional definition, rooted...

The wave of upbeat stories on the developing world's emerging middle class has reinvigorated a debate on how social class in general and the middle class in particular ought to be defined and empirically measured. With the aim of adding clarity to this debate, this dissertation provides a...

This paper finds that factors such as caste and religion influence food security at the regional level. Thus defining affirmative action within food security programs may be necessary as the current practice of designing food security programs around the poverty line is shown to deliver limited...

Die Gruppe der Bezieher eines mittleren Einkommens ist in Deutschland von 1991 bis 2013 um sechs Prozentpunkte auf 54 Prozent zurückgegangen. Das zeigen Berechnungen auf Basis des Sozio-oekonomischen Panels (SOEP). Damit steht Deutschland nicht allein, denn vergleichbare Analysen für die USA...

This paper provides an assessment of how households’ income has fared compared with GDP. While the prime focus is on incomes around the median, attention is paid also to the bottom of the income distribution. Thus, one contribution of the paper is to deliver a fresh assessment of the evolution...

This paper studies welfare dynamics, especially changes associated with middle-class status in Arab countries. In the absence of panel data, we employ state-of-the-art synthetic panel techniques using repeated cross sections of expenditure data from household surveys and subjective wellbeing...

This paper investigates the channels through which the middle class may matter for consumption growth and development. Determinants of the size and the growth of the middle class are also examined. Using several different middle class measures and a panel of 72 developing countries spanning the...